*Article first appeared on the Brand Republic Wallblog 5th February, 2016

Back when this all began in 2005, and the first run of screens launched on the London Underground, DOOH stakeholders were keen to see the premium ad-revenues rolling in for this new turbo-charged Outdoor offering.

Many in the industry thought DOOH would boost Outdoor’s overall market share by deflecting existing budgets away from display and mobile advertising, and this could explain our relative antipathy in the beginning.

Fast forward to 2015 and the mood couldn’t be more different.

We in DOOH now sit comfortably alongside digital and mobile, courting some sort of harmonious digital threeway for clients, inviting them to sample our wares collectively.

This just wasn’t possible in the past. Outdoor was a completely separate discipline, a different mode of communication.

Today, thanks to heavy investment in data, technology and infrastructure, DOOH is agile and connected. It shares the same DNA as online and mobile – able to deliver instant, targeted, location specific information to people on the move, and this synergy is producing some exciting results.

Digital threeway: DOOH, display & mobile

Display has long been the most attractive player in this love tryst. An easy decision for traditional agencies to make out with. So DOOH and mobile have synergised to complement Display, and help drive market share across all Digital.

A good example of this new symbiosis was Google’s landmark pilot scheme ‘Google Outside,’ powered by SoLoMo, it displayed geo-targeted search data from the engines data farm to provide information about local attractions, points of interest, and tailored results to the exact location of each screen, the time of day and even the weather.

Data is where it’s at

Spending on location-targeted mobile marketing campaigns is rocketing. By 2017, it’s set to reach $10.8 billion, a whopping 52% share of all mobile ad spend.

But, now the ‘Lo’ in SoLoMo can also be delivered by DOOH. We know where the DOOH site is, the audience it attracts and can exploit the Context Effect, by providing dynamic, data-driven and locally relevant information to the same mobile consumer. Only on a larger, high-impact, and public scale.

Marketers can double up their efforts and create powerful, cross platform, geo-targeted campaigns. Again, Google has been blazing a trail here when it experimented with the use of ad technology to buy and automate campaign workflows alongside OpenLoop for creative fulfilment – a really significant milestone for the Outdoor advertising industry.

Again, programmatic campaigns have been happening online for a while now but recent moves towards making the DOOH market programmatic, in terms of creative fulfilment and also on the buying side are helping to accelerate this shift, towards a more active, cohesive and relevant future.

Interaction & social shareabilty

It’s not just dynamic ads of course, interactivity on DOOH has embraced mobile. There is a myriad of ways in which this marriage can work – mobile as remote control, UGC conduit, bluetooth beacons, Wi-fi spots, QR codes and social interaction, the list goes on….

And then there’s co-creation of course. Using your mobile, to control and curate a DOOH screen, and creating a piece of content that is pushed back to your device for social sharing.

This is a biggy. Brands using DOOH to amplify their online and social media activity to broadcast level audiences and vice-versa – digital strategists using innovative DOOH activations to provide content and talkability for digital and channels.

DOOH is becoming aligned and in sync with online and social.

The way ahead

This is an exciting space to be in and these are just a few of the ways in which SoLoMo is benefiting from the growing congruence of digital, mobile and DOOH. Great things are happening. SoLoMo 2.0 is here. It’s getting steamy. And we don’t even have a safe word.