Does Out of Home advertising work?
The world of advertising, much like the real world, has seen a progressive shift toward the online space over the past two decades. Digital media has blown up but traditional forms of advertising have evolved alongside it, rather than fall to the wayside. When it comes to outdoor advertising, digital developments have aided our ability to measure performance, support storytelling with data, and prove that OOH really works. To find out how this is, keep reading.
What is Out of Home advertising?
Before we go any further, it’s best to quickly summarise what Out of Home is. OOH is a type of advertising which is exactly what it sounds like – advertising that takes place outside the home. Think of all of the advertisements you come across when you leave the house every day: billboards, bus stop posters, digital screens in shopping centres, to name a few. These are all examples of OOH advertising.
Out of Home has been favoured among advertisers for years, thanks to its broad reach, guaranteed impressions and creative flexibility. It works because adverts are short, simple and direct. They get the message across in a way that’s easy to process, which is especially important when communicating with an audience whose attention you can only hold for a matter of moments while they’re going about their day.
Why OOH advertising works
The benefits of Out of Home advertising are numerous. Advertising to people while they’re outdoors offers many opportunities to align the environment with the advert, allowing advertisers to reach customers at the time and in the place that they’re most inclined to take action. But there are many other reasons why OOH is so successful, as we’re about to explain.
High ROI
OOH offers one of the highest ROIs of any form of media. On top of this, it’s incredibly cost-effective compared to other types of advertising but is still an essential way of getting customers to take action. There’s also the “halo effect” of OOH, whereby other marketing activity receives an uplift in performance when ran alongside an OOH campaign. All of this combines to make Out of Home an incredibly good value proposition.
Flexibility
Billboards might be the first thing to spring to mind when you think of outdoor advertising but there’s so much more to it than that. Inventory in multiple formats, environments and locations is available, making OOH one of the most flexible advertising options. Campaigns can be designed around a specific audience or set of criteria, rather than a blanket brand awareness concept. And with the programmatic buying options now possible through digital Out of Home, you can make live changes, adapting your campaign as it grows.
Accuracy
The past decade has seen huge innovation in the Out of Home space. Alongside the advent of digital OOH there’s been an influx of new tools and technologies to help with campaign planning and performance. You no longer need knowledge of local inventory or of the area you’re targeting – all of the necessary information is available through smart planning tools.
These tools have simplified the process and made it more accurate, enabling advertisers designing their campaigns to have confidence that their goals will be met.
Data-first Approach
Aside from the imperative role that data plays during the planning stages, there’s new research coming out all the time that helps inform other elements of the campaign. For example, Clear Channel’s landmark research project, The Moments of Truth, has recently revealed that contextually relevant messaging increases effectiveness by 17%.
The Bottom Line
Proving that OOH advertising works is a lot easier than it once was. Determining effectiveness now starts during the planning stages, when advertisers ask: who exactly are we targeting and how do we reach them specifically?
This results-focused approach means you can get creative thinking about how you reach people, rather than being limited to established processes. In turn, this tends to result in a more effective campaign and a better idea of benchmark performance metrics before the campaign has gone live.
The bottom line is: Out of Home advertising works. The evidence shows that consumers respond well, with 80% having made a purchase after seeing an advert outside the house. Clear Channel’s own audience insights back this up, showing that 45% of respondents said OOH advertising in a retail environment made them aware of new products or offers.
For more information on how OOH can support your objectives, get in touch.
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