Top 3 ways marketers can capitalize on data-driven advertising with programmatic DOOH

Marketers tend to assign channels and tactics to different parts of the marketing funnel or customer journey

For example, TV and radio are often tied to brand awareness, as they reach broad audiences in emotionally powerful formats but do not offer the targeting of, say, search and social, which are bottom-of-funnel or decision-making channels. But when it comes to out-of-home (OOH), that view is outdated.

Long gone are the days when OOH was limited to selecting a few billboards where a brand might anticipate reaching some mass group of consumers. With programmatic digital out-of-home (DOOH), brands can automatically select digital inventory where data indicates their customers are likely to be. Even better, they can corroborate campaign exposure with location data to prove the effectiveness of programmatic DOOH campaigns.

Here’s why brands hoping to capitalize on data-driven advertising should stop sleeping on programmatic DOOH and integrate it into their media mix.

1.) Pair memorable formats with data-driven precision

The historical selling point of OOH was that it allowed brands to expose consumers to memorable, large, beautiful creative. DOOH enhanced that value proposition, allowing advertisers to pair large, unmissable images with motion. Programmatic DOOH takes the benefits of DOOH one step further by pairing DOOH’s storytelling potential and memorability with data-driven targeting and automatic delivery.

Here’s how programmatic DOOH targeting works. Let’s say a home goods chain wants to drive foot traffic. The brand can use mobile location data to determine other locations where shoppers who visit its stores also go and then essentially retarget them by programmatically placing DOOH ads in those other locations. The brand could also do the same by analyzing where visitors to its competitors’ stores go, potentially stealing market share.

On top of that, programmatic marketing allows for better measurement than has historically been associated with the so-called top-of-funnel channel. Advertisers can use location data to effectively determine the incremental impact of DOOH campaigns on brand lift, foot traffic and even online conversion. Better yet, this doesn’t require using personally identifiable information, only anonymized device information, reducing data privacy risk.

2.) Make ads relevant to the consumer

The digital advertising industry is experiencing a general return to contextual advertising, which aims to optimize ads for relevance to consumers without relying on privacy-sensitive data. The canonical example of this in display advertising would be serving someone reading about running while a footwear ad appears on the site. The contextual advertising campaign doesn’t use the person’s browsing history to target the campaign; it offers an ad relevant to the consumer’s digital experience at the time of exposure.

The same ability to boost campaign relevance applies to programmatic DOOH. Using the flexibility that programmatic technology allows for, advertisers can adjust ad creative based on the time of day, weather, news, or sport outcomes, only serving consumers ads that are relevant to their circumstances.

For example, an apparel brand might incorporate weather-based marketing and tailor its creative in real time to advertise raincoats in places where the weather is dreary, summer wear in balmy climes, and winter coats in places where the temperature drops below 32 degrees. In all these cases, the consumer is seeing the ad most relevant to their in-the-moment experiences (and therefore, an ad for the product they are most likely to buy or remember at the point of contact).

Of course, it is the data-driven automation of programmatic DOOH that makes this real-time optimization for relevance possible.

3.) Take the hassle out of OOH

One of the historical barriers for out-of-home adoption has been the impression that it requires much more logistical legwork than digital channels like search, social, and display. While a big billboard, especially a digital billboard, offers obvious advantages relative to a tiny mobile ad, advertisers are pressed for time and may not have the resources to set up OOH campaigns.

But this, too, is changing - thanks to programmatic DOOH. DOOH inventory can now be purchased via a biddable auction. Advertisers can put in their criteria, identify the types of audiences they would like to reach, upload a few creative files, and programmatic technology can do the rest — orchestrating campaigns and continually optimizing them to help advertisers get in front of the customers they need to reach while eliminating inefficiencies. Campaigns can easily be launched with only a few different creative sizes required, and a programmatic platform removes the hurdles of individually contracting with multiple different media owners.

Programmatic DOOH is waiting for marketers

The global DOOH market is expected to increase in size from about $32bn in 2020 to $45bn in 2027, and the technology supporting that growth is getting better yearly to remove the hassle from one of advertising’s most powerful channels. With Covid’s influence on daily life waning, consumers are likely to be out in record numbers this year. And, using programmatic DOOH, advertisers have a powerful and accessible tool to reach them. The only obstacle in their way may be their own outdated impressions of the channel.