Out Of Home (OOH) advertising offers unparalleled opportunities to reach mass audiences – but how can you get more bang for your buck?
As with any advertising metric, there are time and budgetary costs associated with Out Of Home advertising, and how you run your OOH campaign will affect how much return you can expect.
The good news is that digital out of home advertising (DOOH), and the advances in media buying technology that come with it, present more opportunities than ever before for your OOH advertising strategy. DOOH unlocks the potential for more dynamic creative, direct consumer interaction via QR codes, proximity-based advertising for brick and mortar stores, and precise audience targeting via programmatic buying methods.
Here’s how these advertising techniques offer a better ROI on your investment in OOH media.
1. Use Dynamic, Eye-Catching Creative
The basics can’t be overstated. If your ad catches the eyes of passers-by more than its neighbours, it will generate a better return. Whether you want to increase brand awareness or boost sales for a specific product, dynamic content is essential for successful digital advertising campaigns.
Using digital OOH media space rather than traditional OOH ads gives you the edge here. Digital campaigns using dynamic media offer significantly more potential to create something that will stand out on outdoor advertising screens.
- Keep it bright: bright colors catch the eye, so incorporate them into your design for maximum effect.
- Keep it simple:you have mere seconds to engage passers-by with your message. A simple concept (whether brand awareness-based or promoting a specific product, service or event) will stick in their minds easier than a detailed breakdown of your proposition.
Keep it moving: if you’re using digital OOH billboards, movement and animation (even something as simple as slide-on, slide-off header text) will make your ad more eye-catching. But be careful not to distract – especially important in high traffic areas.
2. Use QR Codes to Engage Audiences More
One of the biggest issues with traditional out of home advertising is that it relies on your audience remembering your ad, then taking action at a later date. Incorporating QR codes to create an interactive campaign helps remove this barrier, and increases ROI as a result.
QR codes are codes that passers-by can scan with the camera on their smartphone. When they do this, the QR code can open a website or perform a number of other actions. This makes them a hugely powerful tool for OOH advertising, because they can lead straight to your business’s homepage, contact details, booking site, or provide immediate directions to your premises.
Consumers respond well to QR codes, and the majority see them as a definitive part of the digital future.
According to recent research by The Drum and YouGov, 45% of US consumers said they had used a QR code related to advertising, marketing or a promotional offer within the previous three months.
(Image source: thedrum.com)
On top of that, the majority (59%) agreed that QR codes would become a permanent part of using their phone in the future, suggesting that now is an ideal time to start incorporating QR codes into your OOH advertising.
3. Use Proximity-Based Advertising to Increase Foot Traffic
‘Proximity based’ OOH is the practice of using street furniture, digital signage, digital billboards and other digital screens to drive traffic to your brick and mortar storefront.
This can be a great technique for increasing return on your Out Of Home ad spend during high competition periods, such as peak shopping hours, the summer sales, or over the holiday period.
To stand out even more, include directions to your local outlet in your OOH campaigns so that potential customers can find you more easily.
4. Use Programmatic DOOH For Effective Audience Targeting
Traditional OOH advertising campaigns are indiscriminate. You pay to target a huge audience, with the expectation that at least some of them will be interested in your product.
Put simply: if enough people see it, someone will buy it.
The issue though?
In an increasingly metrics-obsessed world where marketing and ad teams have to demonstrate a return on every dollar they spend, traditional OOH is imprecise and difficult to quantify. Your investment might increase sales – or your marketing campaign might fall flat.
Programmatic DOOH allows you to buy OOH ad space on your terms. Via a programmatic buying platform – you bid on ad space based on conditions. Your ad is only shown – and, crucially, you only pay – when these conditions are met.
For example, you could bid on ad space based on:
- Footfall
- Time of day/day of the week
- Temperature
- Weather conditions
Because you buy ad space in real time, programmatic DOOH allows you to track campaign analytics in a way that isn’t possible for traditional OOH campaigns. This allows you to optimize your campaign based on real-time metrics, so that you’re getting a better return on your spend.
Finding the Right Programmatic Platform
To unlock the benefits of programmatic DOOH, you should look for a demand-side platform that’s easy to use,
The Neuron is a programmatic out of home advertising platform that allows you to upload your ad creative, bid on ad space, and set your creative live in just a few clicks. Specially designed for use by agencies and small businesses, the platform connects media buyers with a global range of OOH inventory, whilst providing highly valuable real-time campaign analytics for optimization.
