Viral Video Claims Santa Monica's New Digital Billboards Track Your Phone, Operator Says They Don't

SANTA MONICA, CA — A video circulating among Santa Monica residents claims the city's newly installed Third Street Promenade digital displays automatically connect with pedestrians' smartphones and can cause advertising shown on the signs to subsequently appear on their phones.

The company operating the displays says that is not how they work.

Orange Barrel Media Vice President of West Coast Development Clay Collett told Patch Tuesday that the Santa Monica displays contain no technology capable of detecting, tracking or communicating with nearby smartphones — and collect no data from people passing them.

"The signs we have recently installed in Santa Monica do not contain any sort of technology that detects, tracks, communicates with, or otherwise passively engages with a user's smart phone device," Collett said.

The claims have circulated locally alongside a video posted to Instagram near one of the new displays on the Third Street Promenade.

In the video, a woman says the billboard behind her will "automatically" connect an advertisement displayed on the screen with a person's phone as they walk past.

An unidentified man interviewed in the video goes further, claiming the displays use "something called Radar Connect from the Clear Channel Corporation." He gives the example of someone walking past an advertisement for Sephora and then seeing an advertisement for Sephora the next time they use their phone.

"So it's very invasive," the man says.

Patch has not been able to independently establish the man's identity or connection to the Santa Monica display project. The video appears to conflate the Santa Monica displays with a real but separate advertising technology operated by another company.

Clear Channel Outdoor's RADARConnect works differently; location data from a person's phone can indicate that they were near a particular billboard, allowing advertisers to show that person related ads later on their phone. The billboard itself does not directly connect to the phone. But Orange Barrel Media says the Santa Monica displays do not use RADARConnect — or comparable technology.

"As you noted in your question, the RADAR technology belongs to Clear Channel, which is one of our competitors," Collett told Patch. "We don't employ any similar technology in our displays."

Asked specifically whether the Santa Monica displays communicate with nearby smartphones through Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, geofencing, mobile-location data, device identifiers or any other technology, Collett said no.

Asked whether exposure to an advertisement on one of the displays could subsequently be used to target advertising to that person's phone, his answer was also no.

"The practice of targeted ads like this is simply not part of our business model, full stop," Collett said.

What The Displays Actually Do

The displays are part of Santa Monica's new Digital Display District, which the City Council adopted in December 2025 to allow large-scale digital displays at specified locations along Third Street Promenade and Santa Monica Place.

The ordinance marked a major change in Santa Monica's longstanding restrictions on off-premise advertising. The city's ordinance states that off-premise advertising, including billboards, had been prohibited since 1985 before the creation of the new district.

The city says the district permits large-scale digital displays carrying on- and off-premise advertising along with community programming, including public art, local events, emergency notifications and other civic information.

According to the city, the first two displays nearing completion are at the northeast corner of Arizona Avenue and Third Street Promenade and the southwest corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Third Street Promenade.

Patch first reported in August that construction had begun on displays at 1202 Third Street Promenade and 301 Arizona Ave./1253 Third Street Promenade.

Orange Barrel Media says content on the new screens includes city-provided arts programming, free promotion for nonprofit organizations, promotional material for tenants in the buildings where the signs are installed and paid advertisements.

Collett said those advertisements are bought and scheduled in advance — often months beforehand — rather than being selected according to who happens to be walking past.

OBM also rejected the possibility that the screens themselves are quietly gathering information for audience measurement.

"There is no audience-measurement technology installed within our screens," Collett said.

He said outdoor advertising is rated by third-party ratings agencies using information including publicly available traffic data.

"No data is gathered, stored, or shared by us," Collett said.

Where The Claim Comes From

The distinction is important because location-based advertising resembling part of what is described in the video does exist.

Clear Channel says its broader RADAR suite uses aggregated and/or anonymous mobile-location data to plan, optimize and measure outdoor advertising campaigns. One Clear Channel case study says RADARConnect has also been used in campaigns involving geofencing to identify mobile devices in the vicinity of outdoor advertising and later serve coordinated mobile ads.

But Clear Channel's current explanation of RADARConnect describes the process as using mobile-location data to identify exposure to an outdoor campaign — not as a billboard itself automatically establishing a direct connection with someone's phone as the person walks past it.

And according to Orange Barrel Media, the company responsible for the Santa Monica displays, neither RADARConnect nor comparable technology is installed in the new signs.

Patch repeatedly asked the city of Santa Monica to independently confirm whether the displays have any capability to detect or interact with nearby smartphones. The city had not responded as of publication Tuesday.

For pedestrians worried that walking past one of the displays will cause it to connect directly with their phone, Orange Barrel Media's answer is unequivocal: It won't.