Digital Ideas = Digital Dollars
Latest from Ben Putland, COO & MD USA
In the last 18 months, I have read the word “programmatic” more times than I have had hot dinners. But the majority of what I have read on programmatic and DOOH is all about the buy; however that’s only part of the story. Imagine if Amazon had launched their business but not had partners in place to ship the product to the end user, the business would not have lasted long.
Programmatic advertising is a way to increase efficiencies, relevancy and reduce waste. Delivering the right message to the right person at the right time, made possible through the intelligent use of data and insight. If Digital Out of Home is to align more with traditional digital then ideas and content need align too, which will drive media value.
More Digital than TV and Print
The DOOH content in the US today is heavily influenced by TV and Print. However, as the market becomes more programmatic the market should align more with programmatic campaigns, where relevance and dynamic content is the norm. We can already see this trend in the UK market with 80% of the projects we delivered in 2014 being similar to online and only 20% similar to TV or Print. Over the past two years, advertising spend in digital has grown substantially. Aligning Digital Out of Home with the intelligence that has spurred growth in traditional digital is a sensible strategy.
Using those four weeks effectively
Changing the creative throughout the campaign is known to be effective in creating brand awareness and moving consumers closer to the end goal. With most US campaigns running for four weeks there is a perfect opportunity to use the classic marketing and advertising funnel to be more effective. Here’s a basic example for the launch of a film or TV show.
The investment to deliver this level of creative would be minimal versus the cost of media, but response rates would be far higher and measuring success would be very easy…
Plan Ahead
Whilst the ability to programmatically buy media for the next day is great, if the placement is a repurposed ad it will quickly turn into a piece of wallpaper. If you want to deliver a high-quality piece of digital content then you need to time to create it – no shortcuts. Allocating time for production must be accounted for when making strategic digital buying decisions to ensure the growth of the medium. Consider the classic project management quality triangle.
Look back to see ahead
Digital Out Of Home can learn a lot from the early days of digital and this study from Google shows dynamic ads achieved better results than static. This research was done three years ago, but still relevant to DOOH today.
Creativity is what makes a difference to a campaign’s effectiveness.
