Outdoor Advertising: The New Digital Arena

The DOOH industry is at a tipping point—digital screens dot the landscape and the possibilities they offer seem endless, from reactive message delivery to facial recognition.

Digital out of home advertising (DOOH) is not just a sub-set of the out-of-home market. It’s a crucial part of today’s multi-screen experience.

That’s the message to marketers from the U.K.’s DOOH industry, an industry that’s at a tipping point as the number of digital screens continues to increase and the understanding of the possibilities they offer for automated buying and dynamic creative grows. According to research earlier this year by PQ Media, exposure time in the U.K. to DOOH is due to overtake that via traditional out-of-home next year.

“Only around 15% of U.K. outdoor sites have digital capability, but they will take up to 50% of the revenue this year,” said Alan Brydon, chief executive of U.K. out-of-home advertising trade body Outsmart. That’s partly because the sites that have been converted to digital are naturally the ones in the best locations, he explains, but it’s also because the digital screens are brighter and offer capabilities traditional static posters simply can’t.

Reactivity In An ‘All-Screen’ Market

Richard Malton, group marketing director at specialist DOOH media owner Ocean Outdoor, expects the rapid growth of digital outdoor to continue in the next few years, changing the way marketers need to think about the medium.

“We think DOOH plays a part in a much bigger marketing context than just out-of-home,” he said. “Today’s consumer is never turned off, they’re never out of reach of a screen. We see DOOH as part of what the IAB calls the ‘all-screen’ market. It’s part of a wider customer journey than just out-of-home.”

One of the keys to this role in the “all-screen” experience is the ability DOOH offers to change the on-screen copy in a dynamic, automated way.

“The classic poster stays up for a long time, due to the logistics involved in changing it. With digital you could buy one site for one minute if you wanted to,” Brydon said. “Digital allows the change of copy at the touch of a button. You can change when it gets dark or light, under certain traffic conditions or at a certain temperature. You name it, there’s a trigger for copy change.”

The result is less wastage and greater efficiency, and in turn the opportunity to cater to different types of advertisers. Brydon gives the example of DIY retailers who see big spikes in their business around public holidays.

“They wouldn’t previously have used posters, because they wouldn’t have wanted them to be up a week before and week after the holiday,” he explains.

Malton agrees.

“Sixty per cent of our clients will use DOOH for day-parting; we’re starting to see it scheduled more like TV. For example, a drinks brand will schedule their advertising for after 4pm.

Brydon believes that DOOH is currently at its best when used in this way.

“You preplan and build in all the contingencies. This isn’t difficult for clients and agencies—because there are production houses to make it happen—and it’s relatively cheap, because there is no physical production anymore.

“There’s also the opportunity of reactive message delivery,” he explained. “For example, if the main road between London and Heathrow airport was closed, the Heathrow Express rail link could have copy up on the right digital sites within 15 minutes.”

Dynamic and contextually relevant creative also improves campaign results, according to research by outdoor media owner JCDecaux and specialist out-of-home agency Posterscope. This showed spontaneous recall increased by as much as 18 per cent for dynamic advertising compared to non-dynamic.

Virgin Media also tested the use of contextualised creative on JCDecaux screens in rail stations, tailoring the copy to the individual station. As a result, spontaneous recall increased 14 per cent and ad recall increased 27 per cent.

From Scale To Automation

Erfan Djazmi, head of planning (EMEA) at media agency Essence Digital, describes the ability to deliver reactive messaging as “the rise of data-led creative.”

“We know where the consumer is, we know where they’ve been, and we know what’s happening where they are, so the creative we tempt them with becomes much more relevant.”

But he also sounds a warning.

“With DOOH, each location has a different nuance for a customer. The real challenge is to meet that local nuance at scale. There’s no brand we’ve seen deliver creative at scale. It costs more, but if a brand puts the resource behind it, they’ll see the benefit. There’s an opportunity to really differentiate and cut through.”

This is where the benefits of automation are increasingly being seen, according to Brydon.

“There are 400,000 poster sites in total in the U.K. That’s a lot to be bought and it’s very complex and inefficient to do by hand. Automation is making the medium more efficient for buyers and sellers,” he said.

But this complexity is also what is preventing the widespread adoption of programmatic buying of DOOH, despite the buzz around the technology in other areas.

“The ability to buy DOOH programmatically is there, but it’s still very small,” Djazmi said.

Brydon agrees.

“DOOH is not going to be like online for a long time; maybe never,” he said. “It’s down to logistics. There are too many sites that need a human element to trade. It requires a lot of context.

“Online programmatic is about sending a single message to a single person. The strength of outdoor is that it’s a mass-delivery medium. So we talk more about automation and real time.”

But the industry increasingly sees automation and dynamic content as just the basics of what DOOH can do. What matters for Ocean’s Malton is the connectivity being built into digital sites.

“Marketers shouldn’t think about just being able to change copy dynamically. We’re installing WiFi networks in every site we build; we’re building in facial recognition; we’re allowing consumers to interact with the screen.

“Consumers don’t differentiate between screens—they expect interactivity. And that allows brands to have deeper relationships with them. It means digital screens are part of a wider customer journey than just out-of-home.”

Ocean has just finished a trial with BMW using DOOH sites at traffic lights.

“We can identify the make and model of the car and serve ads based on that information, so we were serving BMW ads to drivers of other German marques,” Malton explained. “You could take that a lot further, so for example an airline could target expensive cars with ads for first class, or a watch brand could target men in sports cars.”

Built-In Connectivity

He also highlights the way screens are starting to use data from WiFi logins to improve targeting.

“We’ve launched networks of screens in Birmingham and Manchester where we’ve built in very fast WiFi, and when people log in, we can start to learn things about them, particularly if they log in through Facebook. That allows ads to be targeted more, in an automated way.”

This connectivity is also closing the loop between the physical and online worlds.

“Connectivity between the content and the person walking by means you have the ability to push a message to their mobile, to get them to look at the screen. It turns mass media into one-to-one engagement,” he said.

“Google is on record as saying that outdoor is integral to their future,” said Spencer Berwin, co-CEO of JCDecaux UK. “They’re very excited about merging the physical and virtual worlds using content across different platforms throughout the customer journey. And outdoor is a big signal to start a customer journey.”