Digital out of home: the future of OOH

Digital out-of-home advertising

Introduction:

 

To be to understand the evolution cycle of advertising we have to go way back to where it started long ago, according to Out of Home Advertising Association of America that OOH advertising can trace its linage back to the earliest civilizations, thousands of years ago Egyptians employed tall stone obelisks to publicize laws and treaties also according to Fast Company a group of archaeologists from Yale University and the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels recently discovered while exploring the archeological remains of the ancient Egyptian city of Elkab. There, they uncovered a series of large hieroglyphics that are an estimated 5,200 years old, this shows that advertising and OOH or some form of it has been used eons ago.

Fast forward to a few decades ago before digital existed TV, radio, newspapers, Out-of-home and other traditional advertising channels were the go to option for marketers to push their messages to their targeted audiences, OOH was one of the channels that advertisers relied on due to many reasons mainly that it can reach a huge amount of audiences quickly as almost everyone will see those ads on the streets while they are walking, driving their cars and a whole lot more situations in addition to this many of its formats ensure delivery of advertisers messages in big and bombastic ways that really help brand stood out and deliver highly effective and clear advertising messages (check examples in this article) and also it helps play a big roles in customer journey to purchase due to many factors including that OOH ads sometimes are near place of purchase and they also have pricing and offers which pushes the customer to take action so in short its effective, quick to reach targeted audience, has incredible reach & is considered by marketers in various countries as cheap.

What is out-of-home advertising?

 

Out-of-home advertising (OOH) is any forms of advertising found outside consumer’s house, many mistake out-of-home advertising as only display billboards in the streets but there are lots of types that vary in uses, some of the examples are Billboards, Posters, Wallscapes, Bus sides and bus stops, Digital signage, Video screens, place based such as those in cinemas, shopping malls and lots of other types.

DOOH – The new generation OOH:

 

Digital out-of-home advertising has various definitions depending on its uses but for simplicity lets define DOOH as the digital enabled version of OOH and other simply call it OOH 2.0 showcasing improvement in its uses, others  refer to it as any digital media that appear in places accessible to public which has media presented in a digital format.

Regardless of its definition DOOH has lots of new features that make it more future ready and better for advertisers and helps advancement of OOH to a whole new level.

DOOH – Content formats:

 

Instead of the normal static format that OOH offers DOOH has lots of formats that can be used such as short videos like motion graphics or dynamic HTML 5 & digital imagery, interactives experiences and ability to change content in real time, formats available vary from one place to another of course but those formats combined with having DOOH placements such as digital billboards, footpath DOOH and more leads to some amazing opportunities from a creative standpoint not only that but with ad personalization things like traffic conditions or weather conditions all of that leads to highly personalized ads which means better brand recall and better video through rates. 

DOOH – Programmatic:

 

Programmatic advertising is one of the pillar of digital advertising right now and having programmatic adding to OOH is like a dream come to for media planners and buyers who think offline and online together, Programmatic – pDOOH essentially provides DOOH the benefit of programmatic that media buyers and planners know and love such as automating of buying and selling in the ad auction enabling campaigns to be adapted in real-time without having to slow the down and process and start again from scratch, not only that but also this enables DOOH to have targeting capabilities, optimization capabilities and more features including campaign  measurability.

Conclusion:

 

In addition to the mentioned DOOH has lots of amazing other features but the question that we need to ask Is DOOH all sunshine and rainbows? Absolutely not like any new advertising channel it has its fair share of problems and challenges, for starters in a study shared by IAB conducted by PwC UK 60% highlighted fragmentation as a reason for restricting media spend in pDOOH and 43% % identified the lack of data standardization as a key inhibitor to pDOOH and lastly According to a study by Yahoo in 2020, about 53% of advertisers found it challenging to buy DOOH, so it appears that DOOH as a new format needs some time to grow and solve all of the current problems for it to be one of the main advertising channels that marketers use and like other channels such as Programmatic advertising and CTV it will take time but its inevitable.

 

Reference list:

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