OOH on its own is an incredibly strong advertising medium, however, when used in conjunction with other channels it’s been proven to extend the reach and effectiveness of a campaign.

Consumers today spend 70% of their time outside of their homes making out-of-home (OOH) advertising a prime channel for reaching your target audience. With a low CPM and high ROI, what’s not to love about the traditional channel?

OOH & Online Ads

You might think of these two advertising mediums as occupying two completely different worlds – one physical and one in cyberspace. But with 27% of our year spent online, both mediums actually do a pretty similar job of catching us in our everyday lives.

When OOH is combined with online ads, brands can elevate the effectiveness of their overall campaign by 31% and increase the overall reach by 68%. Used together as part of the marketing mix, these two channels thrive.

OOH & Mobile

Did you know there are more mobile phones in the world than there are people? We’re clearly obsessed with our handsets. So what happens when a relatively new channel like mobile is combined with a traditional channel like OOH?

According to recent studies, when OOH is combined with mobile it can increase a mobile campaign’s reach by 316%.

A great example of OOH working well with mobile comes from McDonald’s in the US. They utilised mobile geofencing to retarget audiences through Waze (a GPS navigation software app). Displaying the same billboard creative within the app, as they were in close proximity to an outdoor ad. This approach saw McDonald’s earn 6.4 million mobile impressions and 1.9 million unique consumers in 8 weeks.

OOH & Social Media

With 45% of the total world population using social media, social is one of the most effective channels for targeting audiences. In its simplest form, the combination of OOH with Social Media could just be a hashtag on a billboard, however, there is a multitude of ways that these channels can work to complement each other.

In 2014, Pepsi Max launched “Unbelievable,” a campaign that beautifully combined digital OOH (DOOH) with Social Media. Featuring an Augmented Reality DOOH stunt, the brand earned over 50 million views online, as well as news coverage and countless awards.

When OOH is combined with Social Media, it amplifies and extends the reach of a campaign from a physical to a digital level. Results from Talon’s 4th space research saw a 48% increase in consumer action when digital OOH was added to a social plan.

OOH is a great amplifier, and when added to your marketing mix as part of a comprehensive strategy, increases campaign performance.

*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.

To promote the hotly anticipated film sequel Despicable Me 2, Universal Pictures kicked off the first ever mobile controlled, personalised, geo-specific Digital Out of Home campaign to span 5 European territories. The creative invites consumers to control the on-screen Minions by texting a command to see them dance, wrestle, play, or boogie. Moments later the Minions behave as instructed with an on-screen thanks to the named participant.

The interactive campaign was conceived by Clear Channel, planned and coordinated by TED@MediaCom and powered by an app designed and built by Grand Visual. OpenLoop, powers the real time interaction and personalises the copy and playout in a mall specific geo targeted response. Users are also rewarded with a text linking them to a copy of their personalised Minion mini-film which they can share socially online.

The campaign runs on 259 digital screens in 51 shopping malls across the UK, France, Spain, Norway and Finland. The interactive experience is supported by additional static and digital formats in close proximity to participating malls. The Outdoor campaign is fully integrated with Universal Pictures’ social and online channels and an online version of the game replicates the experience.

Weetabix has unveiled its On The Go Breakfast Biscuits in a campaign spanning Digital OOH, Mobile and Online. Created by BBH, the campaign strategy aims to talk to busy breakfast skippers on their journey in to work.

Grand Visual produced expandable mobile ads, online banners and a nationwide Digital OOH campaign which demonstrates how the biscuits are ideal for busy people on-the-go. A series of executions depict the journey from home to office fuelled by a row of Weetabix Biscuits.

The nationwide Digital Out of Home ran during commuter hours across transport hotspots and supported commuter-based print offerings with both display and sampling activity running across the period.

The Microloan Foundation, a UK charity providing small business loans to women in sub-Saharan Africa, launched an innovative live donation digital billboard campaign at Westfield London, Shepherds Bush this weekend.

The screen showed an incomplete image of a smiling African woman constructed entirely from pennies. Passersby were encouraged to donate via SMS: “Your small change can make a big difference in Africa. See How. Text CHANGE and your NAME to 70777.”

Each time a participant donated a fixed amount by text, a personalised on-screen thank you message would appear followed by a new batch of coins which would fall into place on the poster image until eventually the picture of the smiling woman was complete.

Completed images appeared on penniesforlife.org.uk where donors can look up their contribution and see their coins tagged within the image. Donors can then share their contribution with friends via Twitter, Facebook or email.

Created by DLKW Lowe, the campaign ran from the 25th – 26th February 2012 as a weekend domination on Ocean Outdoor’s Eat Street digital poster site. Grand Visual provided digital production and tech build, with SMS monitoring via OpenLoop. 3D motion graphics were produced by Absolute with website design and build by United Studios.