Digital out-of-home (DOOH) media has always flown outside the advertising mainstream.
A four-letter acronym? It’s almost unimaginable.
However, DOOH ad platforms are working hard to make the channel more accessible to advertisers who need simplicity and intuitive measurement.
One such startup is Adomni, a programmatic out-of-home and video ad platform that positions DOOH inventory as having fresh appeal for marketers. To put it simply, out-of-home ads stick because people don’t take leaving their house for granted – especially younger folks.
Today’s students were stuck inside during Covid, said Paola Miano, a member of the ad operations team at digital advertising and marketing agency Kortx. “They don’t want to be inside anymore,” she said. “What better way to reach them” outside than with DOOH?
Jonathan Gudai, CEO and co-founder of Adomni, described the platform as Airbnb for DOOH screens. Over the past decade, it’s compiled inventory across more than 1 million screens that advertisers can buy based on location, price and audience.
Taking it to the streets
Setting up a DOOH campaign isn’t as easy or intuitive as flipping on Google Search or other common ad platforms. Millions of advertisers that are on Google or Meta would never think to run DOOH – too complicated, irregular art and formats, too expensive, need I go on?
Which means that one big opportunity for DOOH is to simply be approachable to more small and local businesses.
To that end, last fall, Adomni launched Jeen AI, a proprietary AI assistant. Jeen is a conversational chatbot that “refines” DOOH plans, said Gudai. An advertiser feeds the model with their product details and budget; Jeen proposes a personalized DOOH media campaign.
The campaign can go live within hours, Gudai said.
Every month, Jeen AI rolls out several new features, he added. The most recent rollout, announced on Tuesday, includes an option for advertisers to integrate credit card information, so it’s quicker than the previous invoicing method and more accessible to freelancers and small businesses.
Oakland Community College, a client of Kortx, uses Jeen AI to target more specific audiences and DOOH ad placements.
For instance, one of Adomni’s audience segments is “tech lovers,” which Kortx has targeted to raise awareness for OCC’s cybersecurity program. Per Jeen’s recommendations, Kortx can “target high school students at a shopping mall,” Miano said, and “add in the tech-lovers layer” to best target a prospective cybersecurity student.
Jeen pulls data from Adomni’s historical campaigns and a partnership with LiveRamp, Gudai said.
OCC targets a range of audiences. In addition to “traditional college-age students,” it targets adult learners, high schoolers in its dual-enrollment program and the parents, guardians and school counselors of potential students, Emily Stieber, OCC’s director of marketing, told AdExchanger.
Developing a DOOH strategy helped OCC “connect with these different audiences,” said Stieber. Now, the company is able to parse and target adult learners on their commute or high school students on their way to lunch with friends.
Sharing the wealth
Most small or local brands assume that OOH advertising is too expensive for their budgets, said Miano. “They think the Las Vegas strip,” she added, rather than a local grocery store or gas station pump.
The category will benefit most, Gudai said, if “people of all budgets” can quickly and easily buy DOOH ads by plugging in their audience and campaign goals, akin to how they set up ad accounts with Google or Meta.
The other side of accessibility comes with attribution. Jeen synthesizes large amounts of data into “plain English rationale,” Gudai said, to help advertisers understand which DOOH screens over-index for their target audience.
Once the campaign is live, the advertiser can continue to update it in real time, like adding weather triggers or updating ad content.
“It’s just really easy to use,” Miano said. “You can change anything in the snap of a finger.”
