Trends in OOH Advertising: What Brands Need to Know

Are you curious about the future of OOH advertising? In this comprehensive guide, we’ll dive into the key trends shaping OOH advertising in 2024. From programmatic growth to sustainability efforts, artificial intelligence (AI) and consumer behaviour, discover how OOH advertising is evolving and how you can leverage these trends to create impactful campaigns. Learn how Grand Visual, with our expertise in advertising trends and crafting engaging OOH campaigns, is at the forefront of these innovations.

Get Ahead with These Essentials:

  1. Programmatic DOOH offers flexibility and targeted advertising opportunities.
  2. Dynamic and contextual campaigns are more effective in engaging audiences.
  3. Multichannel integration enhances the impact of OOH advertising.
  4. Sustainability is a growing focus in the OOH industry.
  5. AI and data are driving optimisation in OOH campaigns.
  6. Attention metrics provide a new way to measure campaign effectiveness.
  7. Retail media integration strengthens shopper marketing strategies.
  8. OOH is powerful for brand building and broad reach.
  9. Interactive elements create memorable OOH experiences.

Programmatic DOOH Growth

The demand for programmatic digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) advertising has surged across various industries. Programmatic buying offers advertisers enhanced flexibility, cost efficiency, and the ability to target specific audiences in specific locations. This approach ensures that the right message reaches the right audience, maximizing the impact of each campaign.

Based on the fact that ‘forecasts indicate that DOOH usage will sit at 75% of the whole OOH market by 2027’ (IAB UK, 2023). We can see that DOOH holds a big place in the OOH industry, knowing this we can predict that the ‘growth of programmatic OOH spend will increase by around a third over the next 18 months’ (IABUK, 2023).

Dynamic and Contextual Campaigns

Unleash the power of DOOH by serving audiences with real-world triggers, relevant and timely copy or artwork based on where they are or what’s happening in the world at any given moment like weather and time of day. Using the best public broadcast medium to react to the world in real-time and offer personalisation to your audience, campaigns can achieve a minimum 18% effectiveness uplift for a relatively small investment. ​

Contextual creatives increase effectiveness, with a 32% rise in brain response from audiences (Clear Channel).

Audiences today expect more captivating and engaging content, dynamic information can be a key driver to capturing their attention. Thanks to the data-rich landscape of DOOH, advertisers can communicate their brand messages more efficiently (Forward Keys).

The campaign we launched for Quaker Oats is an example of how DOOH can be integrated with other media within the retail media sector. The digital OOH at bus shelters displayed real-time temperature data, encouraging audiences to scan the QR codes with their mobile devices and claim a discount on their next purchase of Quaker Oats. Discounts were based on UK average temperature data – the colder the weather average, the bigger the discount was. This was replicated across digital screens around the city.

Quaker Oats Outdoor Advertising
Quaker Oats Outdoor Advertising

Multichannel Integration

To gain momentum against competitors, Out of Home advertising can be integrated with broader marketing strategies to create maximum brand exposure.

OOH ads can act as a catalyst for engagement on other channels. For example, a billboard featuring a QR code or a short URL can drive people to a brand’s website or social media profiles. This integration encourages consumers to interact with the brand across multiple platforms, positively enhancing consumer behaviour.

Research shows that advertisers that employ omnichannel strategies in the advertising industry have a 23 times higher customer satisfaction rate (SaveMyCent, 2024).

Focus on Sustainability

OOH advertising continues to be leading the industry in terms of sustainable practices. OOH amounts to just 3.3% of the UK’s total advertising power consumption and 0.067% of all the power consumption in the UK.

The growing emphasis on sustainability in OOH spreads beyond audiences, 69% of employees want the company they work for to be more sustainable (Deloitte, 2023).

The launch of Volkswagen’s all-electric ID.4 made a powerful statement, reflecting the brand’s commitment to sustainability. With the vehicle being 100% net carbon neutral in its production, the marketing campaign had to align with these eco-friendly principles. To emphasize this, we designed a living billboard powered by wind and solar energy, entirely covered in various types of moss—a plant renowned for its remarkable air-purifying and oxygen-generating abilities.

Volkswagen 1D.4 Out of Home Campaign
Volkswagen 1D.4 Out of Home Campaign

Data-Driven Optimisation

Data-driven optimisation is becoming more of a crucial ingredient when it comes to outdoor advertising. That is because data unlocks further insight into the audiences you are trying to target, allowing the possibility of utilising personalisation and hyper-localisation tactics within Out of Home advertising.

This level of targeting audiences means OOH campaigns can be more agile to their changing behaviour and preferences. AI and Data-driven optimisation turn this potential issue into an advantage by ensuring real-time reactivity, making the OOH ad more engaging (Adlucent).

Retail Media Integration

The retail industry adopting DOOH is becoming a growing trend with reports indicating that 29% of respondents credited retail DOOH advertising for influencing a purchase decision they made instore (IAB UK, 2022)

DOOH can elevate Retail Media with unique strategies such as proximity targeting, dynamic creative, weather triggers, and dayparting.

Advertisers can geographically target specific DOOH screens located near their own stores (or competitors), surrounding shopping centres and geo-fence high-value neighbourhoods (The Drum, 2023).

An example of this was the campaign for DKNY, where we were asked to identify a unique way to sample their new fragrance to the right audience and shoppers in malls across the UK. We invited consumers to place their wrists inside a small aperture and a sample of the new DKNY Be Tempted fragrance was sprayed directly onto them. The activity was up-weighted at the weekends with branded promotional staff positioned at each site offering further samples for customers to take home further enhancing engagement.

DKNY Be Tempted Campaign
DKNY Be Tempted Campaign

Brand Building Focus

OOH can be leveraged to increase brand awareness and strengthen a brand’s position in the market.

OOH allows you to use the public space as a canvas and by doing such reports show audiences feel an extra sense of legitimacy about the brand. 40% of people say they trust brands with this format of advertising, which is more than TV or newspapers (Clear Channel).

Brand building is an important strategy to continue pursuing and should not be forgotten about. Statistics indicate 60% of audiences deem trustworthiness as an important trait to develop. (Twilio Segment, 2022).

Pepsi Max’s OOH’s brand messaging was front and centre with the Hidden Pitches campaign. As part of a long-term brand strategy, Pepsi strives to reach Gen Z with interactive activations and influencers to broaden its reach on social media channels too. It featured a Pepsi MAX vending machine that dispensed a Pepsi MAX branded football. Then a laser would project a pitch onto the street commencing the start of the match.

Pepsi Max Hidden Pitches OOH
Pepsi Max Hidden Pitches OOH

Interactive and Immersive Experiences

Engagement can be raised if interactive and immersive elements are implemented into OOH digital signage screens.

There are many benefits that brands can see with the increased focus on interactivity in Out of Home advertising. Interactive content can generate twice as many conversions than passive content (Kapost). Additionally, advertisers can collect valuable first-party data from the interactions to better learn their target audience’s behaviour.

Augmented reality can elevate traditional OOH advertising to a more creative platform. Our innovative use of AR for Sony’s Spider Verse allowed us to create interactive and memorable moments for passersby. A custom application allowed the audience to see themselves as a part of the ‘Spider-verse’ on a large format screen in Times Square. An overlay effect based on the film was applied to the screens to increase the immersion and a facial detection feature was also in play!

Sony Spider Man Augmented Reality OOH experience
Sony Spider Man Augmented Reality OOH experience

Let’s Recap

The future of outdoor advertising lies in digital technology and its ability to enable brands to adapt, personalise, and engage with their audience in innovative ways. By embracing trends in digital OOH advertising, such as programmatic, dynamic content, social sharing and sustainability, brands can maximise the impact of their OOH efforts and create meaningful connections with their target audience. Grand Visual, is at the forefront of these advancements, helping brands achieve their marketing goals through cutting-edge OOH campaigns across traditional billboards and digital screens.