Barry Frey: Marketing Up and Down the Funnel With Digital Out of Home
DPAA’s Barry Frey explains why out of home is more relevant than ever for today’s digital marketers.
“History shows us that OOH is the most resilient of all media, and E-marketer forecasts DOOH spending will increase by 19.2% in 2021.”
By Barry Frey
While branding and sales lift seem to have a natural tension in some corners of the advertising community, that’s not the case with today’s Out of Home (OOH) advertising. Fast gaining digital capabilities, OOH is now taking full advantage of digital technologies and services to deliver a suite of benefits to advertisers, from branding to sales.
As Todd Graves, CEO of Raising Cane’s (a QSR brand) said in one of our DPAA Short Connects video interviews, “Anything Out of Home can do for businesses like mine is to get them all [out of home screens] digital as soon as you can!” The $1.5 billion dollar chicken finger restaurant chain uses OOH advertising and is a big fan of the increasingly digital nature of the medium to customize and pivot with the times.
In what has been a very challenging time, major brands such as Mastercard, Hyundai, Kroger, WW, WWE, Under Armour, L’Oréal and others have also told us about their continued commitment to and use of OOH. The excitement is about how digital and data has changed the game and added a new level of ROI to the world’s oldest medium. ‘Digital’ has transformed the very nature of the sector, from automated scheduling to changing ads based on events in the market to programmatic capabilities. Last year, programmatic digital OOH (DOOH) enabled advertisers to pause and switch out messaging and importantly, follow consumers when they were outside the home—such as on trips to the supermarket—or posting encouraging words for essential workers or safety messages during the height of the pandemic.
Traditionally, OOH with its high visibility screens has been viewed as the most trusted medium, and possibly because of this has been excellent at branding, awareness and top of the marketing funnel activities. But now, using mobile location data and techniques like geo-fencing, the data-infused version of the medium has worked its way down the funnel to sales lift and ROI. Advertisers are using mobile data to track in-store visits and sales back to Out of Home ad exposure.
That’s part of why the full advertising ecosystem is represented in the DPAA membership—out of home media networks, content companies, data and research firms, programmatic/ad tech DSPs, and SSPs, hardware, CMS and integrators. So, not only the medium itself but the association, as well, connects all points of the advertising community, bringing brand and demand together and moving OOH to digital.
“Advertisers cannot afford to only think about long-term branding effects or short-term sales, but a combination that works to engage their customers and help their bottom line.”
To further bring together the brand and the demand side of things, our educational tools cover the full marketing funnel, as that’s what’s essential today. Our global community shares knowledge and best practices, learns from one another, partners and does business together. We want to make sure our members are well versed in all the marketing issues and learnings of the day through everything from white papers and research surveys to webinars, such as recent topics ranging from performance marketing to the effects of COVID-19 on brand loyalty.
Indeed, we are a different model for a trade association where both sides of the table come together to build something bigger to engage consumers in this new omnichannel world, infused with a sense of optimism that’s backed up by facts. For example, while last year was challenging for all of advertising, and particularly out of home, we saw a rise in membership as more people needed to connect and prepare for the sector’s rebound fueled by digital. History shows us that OOH is the most resilient of all media, and E-marketer forecasts DOOH spending will increase by 19.2% in 2021. Couple that with the fact that consumers will want to be outside more than ever, and it is sure to be a great rebound year.
And so, we come back to Todd Graves and Cane’s where he uses Digital Out of Home advertising for both brand and demand. The digital version of the medium allows him to switch out copy—by daypart to push family meal sales in the afternoons, or even based on weather, like driving lemonade sales on a hot day. And he uses top of funnel branding attributes by running brand building ads with local associations and schools. Here again, digital helped him change this copy and showcase frontline healthcare workers in a timely manner.
We have certainly entered a new world: Advertisers cannot afford to only think about long-term branding effects or short-term sales, but a combination that works to engage their customers and help their bottom line. And increasingly they are working with digital out of home advertising as it delivers on all the right attributes in today’s omnichannel world.
February 1, 2021
