5 programmatic DOOH campaigns that rocked in 2023
Last December, JCDecaux UK’s programmatic team complied a collection of the campaigns that really highlighted the potential of the channel, and I predicted that we’d see a bit of a creative revolution in 2023
One of the biggest challenges pDOOH faces is a lack of education and knowledge sharing. To help overcome this we have, once again, complied a collection of the campaigns and creative that really packed a punch this year. Read on to hear how Uber Eats, Magners, OVO, the Women’s Super League, and On Running set the gold standard for pDOOH in 2023. Alternatively, you can listen to the team talk about what made these campaigns special in the season two finale of our podcast Life in pDOOH.
Uber Eats: combining location and DCO to maximize contextual relevance
Deepjyot Bakshi, our programmatic optimization manager is your go-to person for everything DCO and his standout campaign of the year was for Uber Eats. This was such a good campaign, made really impactful with DCO.
We all know that there’s nothing more frustrating than seeing pictures of delicious food you can’t have, so for this campaign they tapped into location data as well as restaurant data to create ads where the creatives had images of dishes served at restaurants which deliver in the locations of the screens they were shown on.
The creative also tapped into many of our creative best practices, the image of the food took up more than 50% of the screen, the text was short – e.g. “Tai Brockley is only a tap away,” the background was the classic Uber green – really simple but so effective.
The thing I really love about this campaign is its simplicity – just goes to show that things don’t have to be complex to be brilliant.
Magners: combining pDOOH and mobile retargeting to maximize performance
Dave Mullan (account director – programmatic) worked on a fantastic campaign for Magners this summer. Each campaign was a short burst of only seven to 10 days, meaning it was crucial to only reach relevant audiences who were more likely to spontaneously attend an event within a seven day window.
The campaign applied a multitude of technological capabilities prDOOH has to offer, including geo-fencing, leveraging rich O2 and IRI data signals to build targeted audience in the cities that the events took place in, day parting as well as retargeting via mobile to amplify effectiveness - and it certainly worked! All 4 events sold out with 100% attendance and even had people on the waiting list. A great example of an omnichannel campaign utilizing pDOOH.
A great example of an omnichannel campaign utilising prDOOH.
- Agency: Numodo
- DSP: Hawk
OVO: delivering against sustainability and campaign goals
This one’s an industry first, one that attracted quite a bit of attention and one of my favorite campaigns of 2023. OVO and its partners tapped into real-time data from the National Grid ESO and used programmatic buying technology, designed, and built by Goodstuff and Assembly, to automatically bid when the grid is greener and will only display the campaign creative during those time frames.
I think this is a great use of data which was really meaningful to the brand and consumers and a great example of how brands can minimize the carbon footprint of their campaigns.
Women’s Super League: location goes local
Our account director – programmatic, Mike Jakob’s stand-out campaign of the year was for the Women’s Super League 2023 season which ran ahead of the season during the Women’s World Cup. There were 19 different pieces of creative, each with a WSL player, which were played in the area that their club team plays, when their national team played.
For example:
- Chelsea player Millie Bright’s creative played in West London when England played.
- Man City player Khadija Shaw’s creative played in Manchester when Jamaica played.
The FA, Threepipe Reply, and Scoota were really strategic here because the WSL wasn’t for a couple of months at the time of the campaign but they knew that public interest was going to rise and they tapped into that opportunity leveraging programmatic to maximize efficiency during this awareness building phase.
I really liked how this campaign also tapped into local community sentiment too with local players being shown in the towns and cities near where they play. OOH in all forms is great at reflecting communities but the programmatic element made this possible at scale in a really dynamic way and it worked so well.
- Agency: Threepipe Reply
- DSP: Scoota
On: tracking footfall to measure performance
On – a sportswear company from Switzerland - launched their first-ever store in the UK this year and as part of their marketing strategy partnered with StoreBoost and VIOOH – our SSP - to create an impactful programmatic DOOH campaign, fuelled by StoreBoost’s strong background in using data to create meaningful advertising. Philippa Evans, associate director, programmatic, worked closely on this campaign which ran over two months, split into three distinct stages to ensure London had an adequate chance to be introduced to this exciting new brand.
To track how the campaign progressed, StoreBoost installed a footfall sensor in the On store. Connected to the StoreBoost platform, the sensor would calculate the average number of signals hourly for every day of the week, and provide a benchmark for uplifts in footfall against the average. This dataset would allow for continual monitoring of the campaign in real-time and fuel the ability to respond quickly, to adjust and optimize the campaign in-flight when ads were not performing as strongly.
It can often be difficult to isolate the effect of DOOH, but this is a great example of how it can be done. A target was set to see a +5% uplift in footfall on days DOOH ads were activated vs. days where it was not. Throughout the campaign duration, days where the DOOH campaign ran had an average 7% higher footfall - again exceeding the target and proving that the pDOOH ads alone had a real impact on store performance.
DSP: StoreBoost
I hope you’ve enjoyed our round up of some of the most innovative campaigns from 2023. There are so many great use cases for pDOOH out there whether it’s to drive footfall to a store, raise awareness, or provide consumers with a seamless journey across multiple touchpoints. It’s a channel that is best used as part of an omnichannel strategy and accessible to both digital marketers and out of home specialists.
If you want to learn more check out our other articles on here, our Programmatic Intelligence Hub, and our podcast series Life in pDOOH which features industry experts from across the agency and tech space talking about real campaigns they’ve run and the results they’ve seen.