“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.
Today’s column is written by Omri Argaman, chief marketing officer at Zoomd.
Google recently announced the addition of out-of-home (OOH) ads into the company’s Display & Video 360 end-to-end campaign management platform. It’s the latest example of marketers gaining the ability to integrate this channel into their existing campaigns, as well as analyze and measure cross-channel performance.
This programmatic OOH push will be a welcome one for marketers. According to eMarketer, a mere 15.6% of digital OOH ads are purchased programmatically today. But, by 2024, eMarketer predicts 25.5% of digital OOH will be purchased in this way.
Now, as consumers return to normal shopping patterns post-COVID, marketers have a unique opportunity. Programmatic OOH – paired with new cross-channel management capabilities – means prospects can now be served OOH ads on their actual journey to the store as part of a more holistic marketing strategy.
Here’s why OOH campaigns can have a massive impact – and how to maximize it.
Billboards with the benefits of digital technology
OOH provides marketers with new creative opportunities. Instead of selecting locations for billboards to run for one week, two weeks or longer, digital OOH ads deliver all the value of digital marketing without the fixed-location commitment of traditional OOH. This means ads can run based on events (congratulate a team that just won a game), time (breakfast promotion between 6:00-10:00 am) or even the weather.
For example, British Airways used an ADSB antenna to announce the destination of the British Airways flight currently visible overhead to people passing a digital OOH billboard in London, with the text, “Look, it’s flight BA 475 from Barcelona.” This effort earned the company a Cannes Lion Grand Prix.
Similarly, McDonald’s ran an OOH campaign to promote the company’s iced McCafé menu, which only ran when the temperature exceeded 72˚ F. And when the temperature rose above 77˚ F, the OOH ad creative included the current temperature in that city and the city’s name.
There are other reasons to be excited about OOH, too. With all the talk about legislating the power of Big Tech, OOH is one segment of the advertising industry that regulators will love. Market leaders Lamar, Outfront and Clear Channel represent 15% of available inventory with a total of 1,100 companies in the US OOH market. In other words, there’s no duopoly here. That said, as the digital OOH market grows, market consolidation should be expected.
And, research into the impact of OOH this summer found that 80% of respondents in Dublin, Ireland, have taken some action after seeing an OOH ad in the past year. These actions include making a purchase in-store, scanning a QR code and sharing the ad via social media.
In fact, the relationship between OOH and social media presents a particular opportunity for marketers. According to the Out-of-Home Advertising Association of America, nearly 82% of users on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter regularly see OOH ad creative in the content that populates their feeds, and 48% of them actually engage with the OOH ad creative they see, confirming the value of a cross-channel marketing campaign.
Spicing up the customer journey
Historically, OOH has always provided marketers with a way to engage with shoppers when they’re actually on their way to the physical store. With creatives bemoaning ads for small mobile screens, digital OOH provides them with a large canvas and new, technology-enabled opportunities.
Adding digital OOH into campaign management systems, as Google has now done, will enable effective integration of digital OOH creative into cross-channel campaigns. And with users returning to physical stores post-pandemic, the opportunity exists to use digital OOH to close cross-channel sales.
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