DOOH vs. OOH: How the shift will impact messaging, targeting and purchasing

Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) is one of the fastest growing marketing strategies out there. DOOH represents a huge range of ad spaces, from the digital billboards of Times Square, to the screens in – and on top of – taxis, to TVs that catch the eye while you’re pumping gas.

In fact, Magna Advertising Forecasts published that “In 2019, Out-of-Home [OOH] advertising was the only traditional media to show significant growth (+6%), driven by DOOH revenues (+20%).”

So what sets DOOH apart, and what considerations do marketing teams need to have when moving into the space? Let’s take a look at what makes messaging, targeting, and purchasing ad inventory are unique in DOOH versus OOH.

DOOH vs. OOH: Messaging

Given the state of mass communications, the world knows about an event moments after it happens, which means public opinion and mood can shift dramatically from (Read more...) minute to the next.

Take, for example, the recent Planters Super Bowl commercial, in which Mr. Peanut dies and is reborn as “Baby Nut.” Despite Planters’ massive spend on that ad placement, the entire campaign had to be paused due to negative public reactions in the wake of Kobe Bryant’s tragic death.

A dead peanut series of static OOH billboards would net a major loss for a company like Planters, having to pay for all ad space to be physically replaced.

Due to the real-time nature of a DOOH campaign, ads can be adjusted quickly in response to events. From small edits to an overall campaign shift, DOOH allows marketers to turn on a dime in an ad environment that demands it.

While this is an extreme example, this same principle can be applied to other use cases, like allowing brands to react to changes in the weather to ensure ads are relevant and timely.

For example, a home improvement store with a gardening DOOH campaign could instantly change it over to shovels with a late season blizzard hits.

DOOH vs. OOH: Targeting

Traditional OOH targeting was a real-estate business, with marketers forced to buy space based on educated guesses of where their audiences might frequent. Now, technology exists that provides specific, granular data using geolocation.

That means that by layering points of interest — or mapping data — with location data that shows how audiences interact with the physical world, and digital data like demographics, behavior and prior purchases, marketers can target audiences as broad as commuters from the Chicago suburbs, or as specific as Bostonians who frequent coffee shops and gas up their cars at least three times a week.

This empowers marketing teams to:

• Deploy creative, extremely specific campaigns to the right audiences.
• Display ads at specific times or on specific days based on peak traffic periods by that property for a specific audience.
• Adjust campaigns based on real-time results, be it by tweaking the creative or by adding or moving display locations.
• Measure the efficiency of campaigns in terms of foot traffic and sales lift.

DOOH vs. OOH: Purchasing

Along with increased agility and accuracy in messaging and targeting, DOOH purchasing is far more compatible with digital marketing operations than traditional OOH.

Because of its digital nature, any digital team can easily fold DOOH into their overall digital strategy, and this is where the real merging of the physical and digital happens.

Marketing teams can stop thinking of OOH as something that exists outside of their omnichannel digital marketing strategy. With the advent of the kind of granular data mentioned above, DOOH purchasing is available both directly and programmatically.

These purchasing decisions are powered and analyzed by new methods of measurement that are far more accurate than before. Traditionally, OOH was not part of the omnichannel conversation because of the inability to measure accurate results against foot traffic or sales lift.

Now that new technologies are unlocking possibilities because as with any other item in advertising, if you can measure the results and ROI, you can justify the spend and unlock new budgets.

Common pitfalls of DOOH

Like with any breakthrough in technology, there are some pitfalls to look out for. When considering a DOOH purchase or analyzing results, keep in mind the following common errors:

• Not excluding “regulars”
  • Customers who live on the same block as a cafe, or frequent it every day anyway, will not be impacted by a DOOH campaign, and should be excluded from any analysis of foot traffic based on DOOH impact.
• Inaccurate control groups
  • The only way to maximize learning from the unparalleled amount of audience data now available is to complete sufficient observation on a control group prior to the campaign to make accurate, timely comparisons about marketing impact.

DOOH combines the eye-level visibility of traditional OOH with the agility, analytics, and quick and easy purchasing of digital campaigns. With the right tools and attention to detail, DOOH presents a huge opportunity for brands to increase their visibility and foot traffic.

Ran is Co-Founder Ubimo, an Out-of-Home technology company recently acquired by Quotient. Prior to Ubimo Ran co-founded LabPixies Ltd (acquired by Google in 2010), a leading web and mobile app development company, growing the business to reach tens of millions of users in four years. At Google, Ran continued as a Product Manager in Search where he led and launched large scale products. Ran holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel and currently resides in New York.

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