Why combining OOH and mobile advertising is the way to go

OOH and mobile advertising - two sides of the same coin

OOH and mobile complement each other and can be very effective when properly combined. OOH is part of public life. It has a wide audience and provides a “one-to-many” ad experience by being present at multiple touchpoints of consumers’ daily life. It helps advertisers give brands high coverage and provide them with continuous and consistent reach. By 2023, it is expected to reach at least $78 billion.

With nearly 4 billion users worldwide, mobile has evolved from a simple calling device to become an extension of the consumers themselves and a constant companion. It provides a “one-to-one” ad experience and can be used to deliver personalized messages, target specific audiences, and collect relevant ad engagement and store visitation data.

Coupling these channels amplifies their individual impact. By combining public ads with measurable results provided by mobile data, agencies maximize brand recall and engagement, reinforce their messaging, and enhance campaign efficiency to drive more customers to store locations.

Uniting OOH and mobile to deliver more impactful creatives

The human brain needs around 400 milliseconds to process a mobile ad - meaning ads should be striking and to the point. In omnichannel campaigns, OOH lays the groundwork to build brand recognition and increases the effectiveness of mobile ads. By anchoring strong brand images in consumers’ minds, it helps mobile unleash its full advertising power and reinforce the brand message. By uniting OOH and mobile, you can create another channel through which your client brand can reach consumers.

To combine OOH and mobile, creating a uniform campaign is a must. To set up a single, distinctive, ad experience, both OOH and mobile creatives should be linked in terms of design and media planning to deliver high-reach campaigns and engaging brand experiences.

Combining OOH and mobile leads to more effective advertising…

A major challenge when it comes to OOH advertising is the lack of interaction with consumers – they can’t click on a billboard to be redirected to the nearest store, they can’t seamlessly visit a webpage for more information or product details. By targeting the mobile devices of consumers who were near OOH ad locations, you can double down on the messaging to help them engage with brands, prompting store visits and making actionable measurement possible.

Tests between S4M and JCDecaux show that combining OOH and mobile increases visits to physical store locations by 2.5X compared to those two channels activated separately - making it a good solution to entice consumers into physical brick-and-mortar stores.

…and gives more insights into campaign performance

Measuring OOH campaigns’ efficiency has always been problematic. But combining them with mobile ads has been a real game changer. With users’ consent, location data can be used to measure the number of people who have spent time near OOH ads and in a relevant store within a precise time frame.

Thanks to mobile, the footfall delivered by OOH and mobile campaigns can be easily measured and unique mobile data can be leveraged to optimize OOH campaigns by targeting all mobile users within a specific distance of a brand’s – or its competitor’s - billboard ad at the right time. It can also be used to reach mobile users passing by a billboard’s location in real time or to increase a campaign’s visibility by pinpointing users who have a high affinity with a billboard’s location.

To cut through the clutter, agencies should think about making truly omnichannel advertising a staple of their media strategy. By combining OOH and mobile advertising, it’s possible to enable brands to drive more customers to stores while maximising the results of their ad spend. Thanks to powerful mobile location-based targeting and insights into the top-performing OOH locations, your client brands can interact with users online and in real-life and give them a holistic omnichannel ad experience.