Walking down the road on a sweet, breezy morning, you are thinking about what to pick up for breakfast. You are early, and most shops haven’t had a good morning yet! Suddenly, you come to a halt seeing a giant digital billboard saying, Looking for some beans on toast or a fresh brew at 7 am? Give us a call, and we will have it at your doorstep in 10 minutes!
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Bemused, you connect with the advertisement and have a hearty meal delivered in 10 mins (for real)! Congratulations, you just ended up purchasing after watching a digital-out-of-home advertisement!
Digital Out-Of-Home (DOOH) advertising involves e-displaying dynamic promotional media such as videos, animations, and brand advertisements. Simply put, DOOH refers to any digitized advertising display that can be seen on the streets or at places of public gathering, such as stadiums and malls.
DOOH has become a rage among the marketing tycoons, for its easy-to-understand operating procedure, besides its tremendous reach and control to the advertiser while catching the audience’s attention more effectively than static billboards!
A DOOH software enables advertisers to remotely control what content shows up on the screens at what time, tailor it according to the location, current weather, people frequenting it, and so much more!
Digital billboard software enhances advertising campaigns by delivering dynamic and targeted content to captivate audiences in real time.
But where do Digital-Out-Of-Home ads work the best? Is it only limited to the colossal billboards you see at Central Square? Let’s find out.
Book My personalized demoOver the past decade, online ad pop-ups have risen, but the click-throughs have fallen at the same rate! All thanks to ad-blockers (yeah, that ‘stop watching this ad’ option, which both you and I have often clicked on!)
Offline advertising still stands strong; especially the outdoor marketing models. With continuous breakthroughs in interactive and programmatic smart digital signage technology, digital-out-of-home advertising has snowballed. Here are some of the most popular types of DOOH that work the best!
The most prominent and probably the best example of DOOH advertising are the digital billboard signs that showcase your brand ads everywhere- from the packed-up freeways to motel rooftops. Studies indicate that 81% of users engage with brands whose billboards they come across.
Digital billboards have already stepped into the future. 3D digital billboard technology will make these large-scale outdoor advertising content pop out of the screens and almost reach out and touch the viewers at arm’s length. Since this form of experiential marketing evokes a sensational ‘wow’ in the viewers’ minds, many predict that 3D digital billboards will soon rule the advertising world.
Also Read: Some mind-blowing examples of 3D digital billboard advertisement campaigns
Example IRL - Cartier’s 3D billboard advert in Hong Kong
In December 2021, Cartier developed a spectacular 3D digital out-of-home visualizer at the Hing Wai building in central Hong Kong. The advertisement opened with a giant red Cartier box on the screen, unboxing into a smaller one reading, Love is all with jingle balls popping all around, indicating it’s time for holiday season shopping! Well, this surely does have my heart
Some of the most engaging and futuristic ad campaigns have been experimented on bus stop DOOH displays. The reason? People are mostly unoccupied, and there is a high possibility that they would like to engage with ad campaigns to kill the boring wait time.
Example IRL - Pepsi Max AR DOOH screens at London bus shelter
Pepsi Max promoted its “Unbelievable” sugar-free drink by offering London commuters an out-of-the-world experience than flat-out advertising.
People waiting at the New Oxford Street bus shelter experienced a perfect handshake between the fictional world and real world through the transparent screens installed with Augmented Reality technology.
From flying UFOs to monsters consuming people on the street and gigantic flying robots shooting lasers from the eye, everything made people jump out of their seats, take pictures, and— if I am not wrong— talk about this to their friends for days to come.
Next to billboards and car-top signs, digital out-of-home installations on the street’s sidewalks receive the highest impressions. Whether you are out jogging or rushing to catch the 9 am bus, you can always spare a quick glance at a bright HD digital poster with an amusing ad copy.
In fact, footpath DOOHs have the fastest outreach per thousand (more than your Instagram post) and involve the lowest outdoor digital signage advertising cost - thanks to their easy mobility!
Example IRL - Emily Crisps’ digital footpath, UK
Image source: MarketingWeek
Snacking brand, Emily Crisps came up with a brilliant digital out-of-home campaign idea amidst the strictest lockdown in the UK back in April 2020. The brand, launched in December 2019, had decided on the perfect summer rollout until Covid played its card!
The creative team was quick to change their plans and turn their presumed marketing misfortune into one delivering smiles to the key workers and those who couldn’t avoid being out and about.
The digital footpath ads read “Our first ever poster, seen by a runner and one pigeon. Typical” and “Hmm… Maybe we should have made a TV ad instead”, alongside colorful images of their unique sweet potato veg sticks and the message “Eat Bold.”
Marketing on the wheels, huh? That’s right!
Your promos are no longer limited to the passengers sitting inside an Uber; you can reach out to the broadest range of viewers since these digital screens are installed on top of vehicles! Car-top DOOH signs are instrumental as they can blend technology like geo-targeting to display ads according to the time of the day and the live location of the car.
Another advantage of this type of DOOH signage is that you can eliminate the costs of putting out multiple location-tailored ads.
Example IRL - Uber’s intelligent Car-Top DOOH in the USA
In April 2020, Uber unveiled the installation of digital screens atop their vehicles that could allow drivers to earn additional revenue by running ads on two-sided, internet-connected digital billboards.
The Uber OOH network was initially launched in Atlanta, Phoenix, and Dallas with 1,000 vehicles equipped with digital screens.
In a statement released alongside this announcement, Uber stated that these displays were powered by technology that could show ads according to nearby places, tailoring according to the location the car is currently at, becoming the first of its kind to introduce mobile digital-out-of-home ads.
In 2021, the network expanded to New York and Chicago.
Most modern-day elevators at corporate tech parks, shopping malls, and hotels would house an embedded flat 15-inch screen to advertise offers from the office cafeteria or play movie trailers & ticket prices of the nearest movie theatre!
Best part? No one can skip your advertisements here― if they are inside the lift, they are bound to see it!
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Example IRL - Lasik MD’s elevator ads
Image source: Vertical impression
In 2021, Lasik MD’s digital out-of-home advertisement series on Target’s hydraulic elevators across the US. These programmatic ads incorporated technology to identify if someone in the elevator was a candidate for Lasik surgery.
The ads could also detect the type of eyewear the riders had on and change accordingly, making it to the list of must-Google brands!
A common sight in the USA, gas station digital advertisement boards are entirely eye-catchers. Waiting to fill up your vehicle at the pump, you glance around and see a new book store is up in the neighborhood.
You were not expecting to come across this ad, but now you want to checkout the place - exactly what gas station screens have as an objective! Attract inadvertently and make them engage willingly!
Example IRL - Gas station ads across the US
Yup, I did have a hard time pinpointing one brand here!
Gas station ads across the US are perhaps the best example of dynamic DOOH. Be it a Pepsi can pop up on a kiosk beside the gas nozzle or a giant digital screen showing Burger King Ads, America has truly made effective use of digital out-of-home technology!
What’s the add-on? The ads are of places nearby, so if you want to show up after being bitten by this bug called ‘curiosity’ and jump in that water, be free!
Well, we do have a clear winner here! And for the right reasons!
Digital Out Of Home marketing has been a worldwide rage for quite some time, given its higher control of content distribution and visual appeal! Let’s discuss a few of the top benefits of DOOH advertising.
Real-time updates: With the world at everyone’s fingertips, billboards need to update in moments! Imagine a monsoon sale advert showing up at the end of the autumn! Certainly not desirable! Is it summer? How about a fickle 20% discount on all your DOOH screens in minutes (nope, not deploying people to take days and change that creaky billboard)?
More extensive outreach: Perhaps, I have been saying it throughout the blog. Digital outdoor signs can grab many eyeballs and get them to Google up your business or drop in at your store more than any traditional advertisement would.
Higher interaction: The tech boom did invoke a growing interest in interactive solutions, making DOOH ads a participatory event rather than a monotonous one-way communication. Interactive gamified ad campaigns with rewards exhilarate the target audience and gain higher brand recall.
Analytics: One of the critical benefits of digital out-of-home displays over traditional ones is that these generate viewership analytics, similar to online ads, proving extremely handy to marketers and network operators. It offers data such as proof-of-play, number of impressions, or any data which allows the brand to understand consumer psychology and plan their future campaigns with data-backed insights.
Digital out-of-home advertising has made life easier for consumers and businesses alike. Delivery of personalized digital ads in a world of traditional offline billboards was never possible earlier. But, with e-signage becoming increasingly relevant, what might have sounded like a distant daydream has turned into a living reality! Technology is empowering the advertising world, and it’s time to say hello to a life we could only imagine in Sci-Fi books!
It’s July in London. If you’ve ever experienced the British Summer, then you know of its unpredictable and fickle weather. It’s Saturday, lunchtime, and the sun is up, a pleasant 25 degrees Celsius. You look up and notice a billboard with a Google search bar filled in with “Next bus to London Fields”, and it gives you a great suggestion - why not spend the sunny day in the park?
You spend a nice afternoon with your friends in the London Fields park, but as the sun slowly begins to retreat, the sky becomes covered in clouds. Just as you pack up your things and get ready to go into the City for a beer on one of the many pub terraces, it begins to rain. As the bus passes the same billboard you saw at lunch, it now displays something different: “Victoria and Albert Museum opening times”, giving you yet another idea on what activities to do despite the unfortunate weather.
Google’s 2019 ‘Make the Most of Summer’ campaign made clever use of Britain’s famously unpredictable summer weather, with digital billboards dynamically switching the displayed content in reaction to the constantly changing conditions. These are just two of hundreds of variations the billboards could display, automatically shifting through its repertoire as the outside environment changed. It was made possible thanks to outdoor advertising spaces that were enhanced with digital technology, part of a new concept known as part of digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising.
What is DOOH?
Out-of-home (OOH) advertising is the oldest and most well-established form of advertising in the world. Think the brightly lit ads of Times Square or Piccadilly Circus, posters, billboards, signage on shops - they are the most widespread form of advertising, and are well-known all across the world.
Despite its ubiquity, OOH advertising has dipped in popularity due to its numerous limitations and shortcomings - the lack of interactivity, their relative inflexibility, the difficulty of changing campaigns rapidly and so on. Many of these issues have been addressed by digital, on-screen (in-browser, mobile phone, TV) advertising through its use of novel technologies.
However, what if we applied digital technologies to conventional OOH advertising? Things like digital screens, sensors, smart screens that can be fed weather and time information? With such technology, these outdoor advertising spaces can become lively, reactive and even interactive.
The result is a ‘best of both worlds’ combination that is known as DOOH advertising, which is essentially offline OOH advertising enhanced with digital elements.
The dawn of DOOH advertising
Advertising has, for the vast majority of human history, existed in the public space. From the first sales ad scribbled onto papyrus in ancient Egypt to the beautiful painting-quality posters lining the streets of Victorian England, ads in public spaces were used by marketers to advertise products and services for passers-by. Billboards, wallscapes, and posters advertised to people who would see these ads while spending time in their vicinity. Their popularity and ubiquity owes to the fact that they are very practical, simple, straightforward and effective. A person simply can’t ignore outdoor advertisements - a study by Nielsen found that 80% of people notice an OOH ad on a weekly basis.
However, as people began spending more time behind screens, whether it was their TVs, phones or PCs, marketers were quick to follow this transition. Technological progression in advertising was largely limited to digital (on-screen) advertising. However, OOH ad space in the form of billboards and posters still offer significant advertising potential - all that they need is a little modernization. Enter DOOH advertising.
Key advantages
DOOH is a new take on classic outdoor advertisements which enhances billboards, posters and signage with new technology, enabling interesting new features such as interactions between the ad and its viewers, remote control of campaigns, real-time bidding for ad time on physical billboards, targeting of audiences and so on.
The transition from OOH to DOOH was inevitable from a business perspective. New technologies that prove their worth are quickly implemented into every industry, and outdoor advertising is no exception.
In many ways, DOOH addresses the problems of OOH advertising while retaining the best features of conventional outdoor ads. After all, there is no ad blocker for the real world, so people cannot ignore DOOH ads like they can with digital ads. As for customer engagement and brand awareness, they are cheaper and more cost-efficient than digital ads. At the same time, marketers can make use of in-browser interfaces to adjust DOOH campaigns.
An interesting ad campaign is an effective ad campaign. People react better to ads that are more relevant to their interests. DOOH ads that can dynamically change in response to their environment are exceptionally powerful; on a hot summer day, you’d be more inclined to buy an ice cream, and an ad may just be the thing that pushes you into that decision. Conversely, on a rainy evening, an ad showing a steaming cup of herbal tea is much more likely to convert viewers into customers.
DOOH can deliver tailor-made ads for a variety of different demographics. If equipped with the right technology, smart screens can recognize who is looking at them and play an ad that is best suited for that particular age group or gender.
Some people may want to find meaning in ads or they want to be able to interact with them in a meaningful way. For instance, an ad campaign that supports natural, unfiltered beauty invites passers-by to upload their own selfie to be displayed on physical screens in public.
Other DOOH ads may offer viewers to send their own messages to be displayed on-screen, for instance, a recent campaign aimed at thanking essential workers during the pandemic allowed people to post their own messages in which they personally thanked others for their work.
OOH advertising is especially powerful when it has a moving image as opposed to a static one. One reason for this is the fact that the human eye has evolved to notice movement. Our eyes are capable of somewhat ignoring images (and thus also ads) that are static, but with movement, this becomes impossible due to the physiology of the human eye.
Use cases
DOOH shines particularly in ad campaigns that need high visibility. It is also particularly powerful in the ‘last window of influence’, which is a term used to describe the 30 minutes before a customer purchases something. In this case, OOH/DOOH is the medium most seen by consumers according to a recent study.
Ads that need contextual relevance are most effective when displayed in DOOH. This is because unlike static billboards, DOOH can be adjusted remotely to reflect changing temperatures, weather conditions, night/day cycle and other changes in the environment. They can also be changed to play into recent or ongoing events.
So, for whom is DOOH the ideal form of advertising? For anybody looking to increase brand awareness while doing so in a cost-effective manner. For those who want their ads to not just be viewed, but also to be playful, interesting and allow for interaction. For everybody who wants to be a little playful in their advertising and engage with the viewer so that it leaves a lasting impression. DOOH presents an exciting and novel form of outdoor advertising, and you don’t want to miss out being a part of it!
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