Digital-out-of-home (DOOH) media has existed for more than a decade. But it’s only starting to claim its place in the programmatic pantheon.
The Trade Desk launched DOOH buying during the pandemic, and Google’s Display & Video 360 DSP came out of a long-running DOOH beta in August. Only yesterday, the IAB updated the openRTB specs for DOOH sales.
Also this week, the out-of-home ad-buying and analytics company AdQuick debuted a self-serve DSP. Other data-driven media types – such as native, mobile and video – often started out with specialist DSPs that folded into omnichannel solutions.
But there’s a need for a DOOH DSP that’s specific to the out-of-home market, said Elliott Hasiuk, principal for digital media at the agency Part and Sum, who uses the AdQuick DSP as well as The Trade Desk and DV360.
DOOH vs. Omnichannel DSP
Although the two biggie generalist DSPs (DV360 and TTD) do have DOOH channels, DOOH doesn’t fit neatly into an omnichannel approach, according to Hasiuk. Native, video and mobile media, for instance, all converged. One campaign might easily jump between those inventory buckets.
DOOH is a structurally different mix of reserved buys, static inventory and actually live biddable media. Many desirable OOH spots (think Times Square or airports) can only be reserved ahead of time and for a set period – like a four-week buy.
A brand that uses The Trade Desk to buy across media may also use it to buy DOOH. But those campaigns are still bought and attributed in a silo, Hasiuk said, because the creative and buying practices are so distinct.
“If we were to buy a static billboard directly from a vendor and then a programmatic campaign from a different DSP, it’s hard to tie it together,” he said, “so we like having all of that in one place.”
Another key difference has to do with the interface. AdQuick’s DSP is built over a map. The Trade Desk tries to span the internet and internet users. A DOOH DSP focuses on how to blanket people in specific real-world locations.
Hasiuk said one music streaming service client tested the AdQuick DSP to target ads around live music events and venues. A tech company hosting an event in San Francisco used it to place ads between the airport and the event location and around the conference. A luxury fitness brand puts ads on screens and bus stops surrounding gyms.
DOOH attribution
Attribution has always been a hurdle for the out-of-home category. The pandemic resuscitated QR codes (how else to get a menu without touching a menu?), but there’s still been no good way to prove billboards or a screen in the subway drove a sale.
That’s changing, though, Hasiuk said.
DOOH media testing and attribution have become much more sophisticated. Part and Sum now measures DOOH campaigns with geo-level testing (comparing two cities with similar demographics, one served a DOOH campaign and one with no ads as a control group) and in some cases by creating survey-based groups of people who remember seeing the ad. The company identifies mobile devices likely to have seen the DOOH ad and then targets those IDs programmatically with surveys asking if they remember the creative and how they feel about the brand.
DOOH is also starting to demonstrate “causal impacts,” Hasiuk said. That means not just reach and frequency (which DOOH can overattribute, since a single ad unit might be seen by many people), but beginning to connect real business KPIs to outdoor inventory in statistically significant ways.
One B2B tech client, he said, has begun using AdQuick’s DSP to see if locations with billboards and subway campaigns have higher lead generation rates. An ecommerce brand is breaking out markets with DOOH and without to see whether the campaigns affect organic search and site conversion rates. A mobile developer is doing the same but is trying to connect out-of-home media to app installs in a market.
DOOH has been thought of as pure branding, according to Hasiuk. Which makes sense, considering out-of-home media might just be a big picture of, say, a Big Mac and the McDonald’s arches plastered 40 feet in the air.
“Now we’re able to tie that branding to bottom-of-the-funnel metrics that matter more to the business,” Hasiuk said.
And DOOH doesn’t have to become an online performance channel to compete, he said. As DOOH is improving by leaps and bounds, attribution and analytics degraded in major digital channels like Facebook and Google, and customer acquisition costs increased across the web.
“We increasingly think of programmatic or digital out-of-home as a core part of our mix,” he said. “Marketers tend to think in terms of running a brand campaign or running an acquisition campaign, but we try to tie those together through that messy middle.”
