Programmatic and Digital Out-of-Home – An Unbeatable Combination

The ability of media to adopt valuable tools that better track and measure audiences continues to expand and evolve. For Barry Frey, President and CEO of the DPAA, it is the rollout of programmatic digital out-of-home (DOOH) that has served to catapult that advertising form to new heights. “As we have built and led the programmatic discussion and evolution in DOOH for many years now, it is invigorating to see that Programmatic DOOH has emerged as the ‘superpower of OOH advertising’.  From the first days of the pandemic, programmatic trading demonstrated the needed agility and flexibility of the DOOH medium,” he stated.

With Intersection, an out-of-home company with a footprint in 18 cities, the advancement of programmatic is proving to be a valuable asset to help advertisers reach and leverage target audiences as well as enable higher quality attribution. Sheri Ham, Intersection’s Vice President of Programmatic Partnerships and Sales, describes her street traffic company as being in the sweet spot of out-of-home and programmatic. “We compete with all of out-of-home,” noted Ham, “And our advantage is that we have the ability to reach audiences, help brands target their audience, provide data driven solutions and offer measurement tools to help them understand their business outcomes,” all within a programmatic framework that, “provides the brand the opportunity to reach their audiences at the right time in the right physical spaces,” across 6,000 screens.

Impact of the Pandemic on OOH Programmatic

As we have seen the pandemic greatly impacted human behavior and changing the landscape for much of media. “The industry was able to pause, push and easily move schedules to where desired audiences existed during Covid and now that people are coming back out of home again, the dynamic capabilities to target and indicate attribution are driving OOH advertising to larger portions of the Omnichannel media mix.  Programmatic is driving digital, mobile, video location and other budgets to OOH on a global basis,” Frey explained.

For Ham, even though consumers sheltered in place, the pandemic actually accelerated current programmatic trends in out-of-home. “Prior to the pandemic the foundation was really in place,” she began and then added, “but the pandemic accelerated programmatic largely in part to the flexibility that programmatic affords and the advancements across-the-board, campaign planning, execution and measurement.”

There is also a new advertising mindset in programmatic. Ham noted that, “What we've seen most recently coming out of the pandemic and post Covid is that agencies have had shorter planning cycles so they are turning to the flexibility of programmatic to help them in their planning efforts and to get campaigns activated in a shorter timeframe than they've had in the past.” And now even the landscape is shifting. “We're coming to post pandemic and starting to see more people spend time in physical spaces,” she added.

Overcoming Obstacles

Out-of-home has had its share of skeptics. “There's a perception that there is a lack of ROI in the out-of-home channel,” she posited. “The reality is that there have been improvements across the board for measurement and attribution and that those tools and solutions are now available to brands to kind of measure their brand lift to look at the engagement from users across the channel to have the ability to really target those users on online. This has helped move out of home from the top of the funnel.”

Campaign Success

When asked to cite an example of a successful Intersection campaign, Ham shared a national campaign for a Pharma brand which leveraged audience targeting, retargeting and a brand lift study. “We used Neustar audience data to identify the clients target audience and the corresponding screens that over index against that audience. We deployed the campaign nationally and then retargeted the users who  were exposed to the brand messaging across Intersection screens nationwide and then retargeted those users online,” she explained. The result was that the campaign saw an increase in performance for both VCR (video completion rate) and CTR (click through rate) for users that were retargeted following the out-of-home exposure versus only those that were exposed online. In addition, “We also included a brand lift study for that campaign and 77% of the respondents said that they liked the Ad or had a better brand opinion following the exposure to the Ad,” she noted.

The Future of Programmatic Out-Of-Home

“eMarketer has been charting the aggressive programmatic DOOH growth in the US and projects 2021 at $435M almost doubling previous years,” noted Frey who added, “Many in the industry believe the figure will far surpass these estimates.   Programmatic DOOH was a huge part of our Summit this year with all of the major SSPs, DSPs and related platforms engaging in serious and productive dialogue.”

Ham, too, is very optimistic about the future of programmatic DOOH and Intersection. “We will continue to see expansion across the channel, there will be more tools available to the buyers for more attention on reaching target audiences. We make sure that they get the right user at the right time through the premium real estate that out-of-home provides,” she asserted.

She predicted that, for the industry, “The measurement tools will continue to advance over the next few years and we will also see continued expansion and collaboration between out-of-home and digital teams. There's an exciting opportunity for TV and video budgets to shift as the industry continues to build out mixed model attribution and measurement tools.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Artwork by Charlene Weisler

 

DOOH is the Epicenter of Media and Marketing. Showcasing the DPAA Conference for 2021.

This year’s DPAA conference took place in person on October 12 and spoke to the value of DOOH. Barry Frey, President and CEO, DPAA is bullish about the value of DOOH and its capacity to hyper target to the right consumer at the right time. “There is no better way to see trustworthy messaging in an utterly brand safe environment. No fake news, no echo chamber talk, no ad skipping or pod fraud,” he stated.

There was a range of compelling case studies showcasing how different companies in a range of categories met the challenges of 2020, reinventing themselves while maximizing the value of DOOH.

DOOH is Growing

The conference launched with an overview of a recent research study that confirmed the growth of DOOH. Roey Franco, Vice President of Product and Innovation, Xaxis, reported that DOOH has made great strides this year especially among agencies. The topline results showed that 77% of those brands and advertisers polled said their awareness of DOOH increased over the past 18 months, 81% plan to recommend DOOH in their media plans in the next year and 66% have activated new DOOH campaigns in past 18 months. “There was a strong correlation between activation and greater sophistication,” noted Franco who added, “We can credit it to two things. One; A lot of investment in education and from a sophistication perspective, we that found that enhancements within the space itself, drives adoption.”

Facing Covid and a Business Transformation

For his company, Patrick McLean, Senior VP and CMO, Walgreens noted that in the early days of Covid it was a matter of unknowns and survival. Even adding plexiglass dividers across all of their stores was daunting as well as finding certain products for increasingly empty shelves. Masks became a must-offer followed by meeting the demand and complexity of the vaccine roll-out. “We had to build this new muscle to take this on the road,” he explained. “We were very customer driven at this time. We learned quickly that everyone is different. Approach had to match up,” to the specific consumer. “A lot of dynamics were in play.”

Not only did Walgreens develop several key messages they brought to market, “We were also in the process of transforming our business. We were not really known for its digital capability and our marketing was traditional,” he admitted. So at the same time as Covid, Walgreens was re-positioning to a mass personalization position by implementing marketing technology.  My Walgreens loyalty program was previously siloed, he noted, but now was moving swiftly into a more one-to-one digital customer experience. This required a re-authentication of the full customer database which could then enable a more seamless customer communication process. This has enabled Walgreens to fortify their first party data as well as to, as McLean explained, “Get back to our core of health and wellness,” brand positioning for their customers. He noted that their data strategy has become, “a powerful asset for our company,” enabling Walgreens to expand the use of their data knowledge.

Connecting with the Social Media Generation

There is arguably nothing more ubiquitous than milk, which, because of its ubiquity, has experienced a weakened brand position, especially with the digital generation. For Yin Woon Rani, CEO of Milk Pep, this was a challenged that needed to be overcome. “We realized that to change, we needed to build a bold new strategy; one for the social media generation,” she began, and added, “They are a challenging generation. They are true digital natives and are sophisticated about marketing.” This presents high standards for marketers. Her goals was to, “Drive reconsideration of milk through new messaging and positioning,” something that is, “assertive and muscular.”

The tagline, “You’re Gonna Need Milk for That” was developed and supported by DOOH marketing which was eventually migrated and shared on Tiktok with great success. Going forward, the milk campaign is dedicated to greater cultural collaboration, experimentation using constant reiteration and the mantra to Be Remarkable.

The Importance of Both Quantitative Data and Qualitative Creative

For Jonathan Gudai, CEO Adomni, “It has been said the Data is the new Oil. You need an engine for oil to matter. We on the programmatic side, we on the digital home side are that engine that is ingesting that data and then creating all sorts of new opportunities to reach consumers in brand new ways that drives relevancy and engagement. But data is useless unless it’s being applied.”

On the creative side, Rob Master, Vice President and Digital Engagement, Unilever, has seen great creative possibilities with the convergence of media. “The convergence between media and commerce is one of the most exciting things we are facing today. It’s filled with so many great opportunities,” he explained, giving retailers great opportunities to connect with consumers through platforms and technology. “And ecommerce products and experiences tend to create a premium,” he added.

Brands can strengthen their presence through storytelling. “Storytelling helps lead to people being passionate and loving your brand or understand that they need your brand or understand the functionality of your brand,” he continued, “Storytelling is such an integral part of the marketing experience and all these platforms and the convergence of telling that story allow what we hope is a frictionless great consumer experience.”

Conclusion

As we evolve to a post pandemic environment, it is clear that DOOH is in the perfect position to not only re-emerge but to thrive. There is pent up demand to get out of the house and that brings more people into streets and venues where their yearning for stimuli is at its peak. The convergence of media, the ability to cultivate a range of data sets and the immense potential for creativity places DOOH in the epicenter of media and marketing.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

 

Maximizing the Impact of Out of Home Measurement

Where is out of home (OOH) headed in a world of media fragmentation and greater competition for consumer attention? 

The ARF helped to answer these questions at their Maximizing OOH Impact event this week. A roster of participants including Andy Stevens, Senior Vice President, Research and Insights, Clear Channel Outdoor, Christian DeBonville, Director, ESPN Advertising and Marketing Intelligence and Emma Carrasco Chief Marketing and Engagement Officer, Senior Vice President of Global Strategy, National Geographic Society weighed in on how data, technology and creative can all be leveraged to raise awareness, improve branding and efficiently capture the consumer journey.

OOH at a Measurement Inflection Point

According to Barry Frey, Chief Executive Officer, DPAA, “OOH is one of the hottest media today.” He cited three pivotal societal and technological changes have been a boon for OOH. First, we are spending more and more time out of the home. “We are increasingly an active mobile society,” he asserted, “and we are becoming a more urban society.” As mobile phones become ubiquitous, this fuels the ability to track people wherever they go. Second, Frey sees advertising inside the home as “fragmenting at best and declining at worst.” Third, with the addition of digital data capabilities, OOH is now able to count, measure the impact and attribute usage just like the rest of the media industry. This improvement in measurement coupled with a safe, viewable, closed system that has no ad blocking, places OOH on an equal footing with other establish media options.

Data and Technology

The advent of improved technology that results in more valuable data is pivotal to OOH’s growth. The ability of marketers to track the consumer journey with mobile geo location data, for example, has created opportunities and greater confidence in OOH. Nielsen has been very active in expanding its OOH measurement offerings as are companies such as iQ Media which offers visual detection data that includes mood and engagement metrics.

“There are three reasons why mobile is so important,” Andy Stevens, Senior Vice President, Research and Insights, Clear Channel Outdoor noted, “Everyone has a phone and we carry it with us all the time. In fact, 85% of adults have their phone within arm’s reach all the time.” The full consumer journey becomes evident because the data tells us where people are, their routes throughout the day and their possible exposures to billboards. The methodological road has been long one but now refinements in the methodology, such as radius assessments and direction of travel, give the advertiser greater confidence that ads have actually been viewed.

Clear Channel’s case study “not only used mobile data in the planning and measurement of OOH, we also used it to amplify the impact of OOH by retargeting people who have seen OOH ads with mobile ads,” Stevens explained. This has a priming effect where the lift in store visits with and without the additional mobile ads could be compared. “There is a higher lift from people who have seen both the OOH ad and the mobile ad,” he continued, “It is a one plus one equals three effect going on. There is a natural synergy between mobile and OOH.”  Stevens is finding that these results are valuable sales tools for advertisers who may be using mobile but currently do not have an OOH strategy. “An integrated media strategy can yield better results overall,” he concluded.  

Powerful Creative Is a Must-Have

Powerful creative also plays an important role in OOH effectiveness. Emma Carrasco, Chief Marketing and Engagement Officer, Senior Vice President of Global Strategy, National Geographic Society, has developed a Photo Ark Campaign to help raise awareness of the last 12,000 species in captivity before they disappear. “Our partnership with the Outdoor Advertising Association of America enabled us to take this campaign to a whole new level,” she explained, where association members can get more involved in spreading the message. She shared with me that the feedback has “been tremendous,” with support across traditional out of home, digital, transportation, for example.  Social engagement, and its resulting data, has offered a huge, measureable boost in awareness.

Carrasco sees the next five years as a continuation of National Geographic Society’s efforts to build a complete documentation of all of the species in captivity. Currently 7,000 animals have been photographed, but there are still 5,000 left to do. “We want to bring awareness to what happens to society when these species disappear. We might actually have a chance to save some of them.”  Strong creative in conjunction with OOH ad placement and measurement will help propel this worthy cause.

Data Debunks OOH Myths

OOH exposures are surprisingly pervasive. Christian DeBonnville, Director Advertising and Marketing, ESPN, found that “the OOH audience is seen throughout the year, throughout the day and not just the biggest events in bar locations. It is programming that is on in the morning, during mid-day when we presume people are at work or at the gym or other out of home locations where we are seeing significant lifts.”

He noted that agencies and clients are more receptive to giving credit for audiences that are seeing programming and ads outside of the primary residences. The ability to credit the full consumer journey is great news for both advertisers and content creators.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Out Of Home or In Home – The Consumer is the Same According to the DPAA

It is easy to see how different sectors of the media industry are converging when one attends a series of conferences over the span of a fortnight. From Television Week’s selection of panels to the Livefronts for streaming video to, most recently, the DPAA, it is evident that while the modes of content delivery may vary, the opportunities and challenges to the various business models are sounding eerily similar.

The DPAA is especially interesting because while it has always operated in out of home media consumption, the digitization of content has moved it squarely into the vortex of cross platform content competition. Barry Frey, President and CEO of the DPAA, noted the change in the business by stating, “Content is becoming even more important. What use to be paper and plastic is now digital.”

Attention (On Any Platform) is the Holy Grail

Rich Greenfield, Media & Tech Analyst at BTIG, noted that he is “seeing a meaningful change in behavior. We are spending life looking down - staring at our phones. Engagement has shifted from the TV to the phone and that is wreaking havoc with the legacy TV ecosystem. There is a fundamental shift in behavior.” So engagement has become at once vitally important and increasingly ephemeral. According to Greenfield, because of the vast choice of content on demand, “We are better at maximizing the utility of our time than ever before.” And while there is a shift in power, with TV possibly becoming a secondary platform to mobile, massive change will not happen overnight. “It will take a while,” admitted Greenfield.

Challenges Are Universal – From Metrics to Ad Length

There is nothing quite as vexing as trying to formulate a more relevant measurement metric for cross platform while legacy measurement for legacy media (ratings) are declining. “We can talk about the fact that ratings are down a lot but engagement is down a lot more,” stated Greenfield. “So what do you do? Mobile hasn't figured out how to create a robust viewing engagement. How do you monetize Facebook live?” he asked.

The effectiveness of commercial formats will differ by platform. Thirty second spots may be too long for viewers using handhelds and the timing of ads within content can be a sensitive decision for advertisers. Greenfield wondered, “Do you cut away to commercial? Do you overlay?” How can we create opportunities for new forms of advertising in a world where consumers are not getting the same level of engagement? And it’s not just the format and placement. It is also the creative which poses its own set of challenges. “Society at large is very distracted. And they can't really multitask because attention drops,” according to Bonin Bough, Host for the Cleveland Hustles.

Corporations are Re-focusing their Goals

Challenges are leading to a corporate reassessment. Whether an agency or an advertiser, the proliferation of consumer choices heats up competition for attention and fuels the need for companies to refocus. Doug Ray, CEO, Carat explained that, “We are a media agency and have to start to think of ourselves as an audience and people based agency. The way people are engaging with content is not linear anymore. Viewing video is at an all-time high. So we now follow the consumer to help us bridge this disparate ecosystem and help our clients sell more product.” But agency clients are often enmeshed in legacy thinking. “TV is still the greatest driver of sales contribution but there has been an erosion of its contribution over the past several years. And we will continue to see the erosion of results for our clients,” he noted. “The answer,” he continued, “is to start thinking more about people. Audience first; How to find them, how they engage with screen and how to measure the success of that engagement.”

Conclusion

The industry moves slowly and, arguably, too cautiously. In this era of accelerated change we must not only be nimble but also strategic. As Lou Paskalis, SVP, Enterprise Media Panning, Investment and Measurement for Bank of America, concluded, “We need to measure what matters, understanding what is relevant. Diagnostics like reach and frequency won't get us there anymore. The return is in relationship not the transaction.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com

DPAA Explores the Mediapalooza

If you think at the television space has undergone change in the past few years, you haven't seen anything yet. In the world of out-of-home (OOH) digital placed based media, the impact of digital technology arguably surpasses all other types of advertising media. Which is why attending the annual DPAA conference is so important to understand the pervasiveness and effectiveness of digital messaging on consumer behavior. "It is a great time for video" exclaimed DPAA president Barry Frey, "The world is changing, disrupting, fragmenting and shifting like tectonic plates. Technology is forcing change upon consumer habits which is foisting change on media habits.  It is a Mediapalooza."

Indeed, now we can receive content and messages when we pump gas in our car, sit in a movie or a nail salon, shop at a bodega or a mall, use a vending machine, an elevator, a taxi or Uber or visit a doctor’s office. There are many new streams of data available through such novel sources as vending machines, airports, stadiums and gyms. The opportunities to reach consumers at every point in their day wherever they are, makes for new collectable datasets that can lead to an all-encompassing view of their behavior.

Currently “forty-one percent of OOH is digital,” according to DPAA Chairman François de Gaspé Beaubien and this is posed to increase over the next few years. Looking ahead, Frey predicts that "by 2017 more than half of all ooh revenue will be digital and 10% bought programmatically. There will then be a steep curve towards programmatic. *

So where is all of this disruption leading?

Change, Change, Change

Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Strategist for Publicis Groupe mapped out three areas of massive change - Globalization (which he deems “unstoppable”), Demographic shifts (noting that the average age in Africa is under 21 and the aging of China led to the reversal of the one child rule) and Digitization (which is driven by phones that today have “1000 more processing power than in the first space shuttle.”)

Marketing Without Borders

Tobaccowala reprimanded marketers who he said, “have to learn how to market. They haven't done so in 30 years. Eighty percent of what marketers were doing was logistics and managing revenue points.”  Relying on comparing yourself to a traditional set of competitors is risky because “threats and opportunities come from the outside.” Take, for example, the iPhone. “When iPhone came out Nokia and Blackberry did not take it seriously because it had no keyboard and, anyway, what did Apple know about phones? If you don't take people seriously, things happen. Benchmarking against other pathetic people doesn't make you any less pathetic.”

Forget Data Ownership. The Secret to Success is Storytelling

And the lure of owning your data? Tobaccowala is unimpressed. He said, “Owning data alone will be obsolete. It is how you access data not own it. It is the algorithms. Owning is so 1980s.” The secret to success is storytelling. “We have to recognize that we are talking to humans. Storytelling is very, very important. And mobility is also important.” He concluded, “Change sucks. The more things you want to stay the same, the more you have to change yourself. How do we change the people? We need to learn to collaborate.”

Ecosystem Dichotomies
Lori Hiltz, CEO Havas Media spoke of the “complexity of our business where the largest retailer does not own a store, where families are connected and disconnected at the same time and where technologies shape the dynamics of the new us.” Despite rumors to the contrary, David Sable, Global CEO Y&R asserted that, “TV is not over. Cinema is still strong. They say that print media dead but catalogs are having resurgence.” He also refutes the theory that as media gets fractured, TV audiences will likely get smaller. He said, “How do you define TV? We are watching more video than we have ever watched in the history of mankind. We are watching for longer and longer time. There are more screens and more shows to watch. In 1999 there were 26 series to watch. In 2014 there are 1715 series shows available to view, not including short form video.”

The Future is Expansive and Expensive

“Let’s set the record straight,” advises Sable, “The narrow definition of TV is digibabble. As Michael Wolfe wrote in his new book, TV is the new TV. It is simple. Think about the entire ecosystem. Twitter doesn't kill TV. It makes it better.” The idea that content can be free is unsustainable to Sable. “The future of free is dismal and not sustainable. Advertising pays for content. There are three ways to access content - steal it, pay for it or watch ads.” And just wait – “NFL contracts are up in 2022,“ Sable warns, “That is when the next big change will happen. That will be the next huge inflection.”

Addressable Advertising Pushes the Television Evolution

The recent B&C Content Show dedicated a full half day to discussions regarding the advancements in addressable advertising, TV programmatic and transforming traditional advertising. But it was also a love song to STB data, segmentation, ROI data and analytics.

Addressable advertising is reaching scale according to Jaime Power of GroupM’s Mobi Media who said that the footprint is currently "42 million HH and expected to grow to 60 million HH" with a steady expansion from local into scatter and national outplays." But he cautioned that "addressable will not replace traditional TV because we need traditional TV for reach." I agree with Power to a point because I believe that traditional TV itself needs to evolve from a spots and dots sales model to segmentation and proof of ROI. Addressable may facilitate traditional TV’s evolution especially as addressability rolls out to a more nationalized  distribution and as television itself becomes more digital in the world of 100% smart TVs.

The Traditional TV Model is Changing
The television business has been undergoing stress and change. Sales are down across many networks and projections indicate that the trend could continue. When asked if Addressable can save the TV environment, Power replied that "TV has to evolve- it is unrecognizable compared to ten years ago. We need to understand the new landscape and find ways to measure it. Not all customers are the same. We need to need to get to the custom level and reach core segments. Like purchase data where we can locate not just households with a dog but households that buy a certain dog food. You need to prove you can steal share by honing in on people's viewing behavior. We are using STB data and working close with analytics teams."

Research and Analytics are Critical

Virtually every panel touched on the need for measurement, targeting, analytics and usable data sets as part of their company's addressable initiative. Ben Tatta of Cablevision explained that "Data analytics is a new thing for television. Now we are conducting forensics on the data, on exposure and on response. (we recognize the ) importance of first party data. For the first time advertisers can use their own customer file. Age and gender have been proxies. We now don't have to do modeling. We are literally counting Sales." Keith Kazerman of DirectTV fielded "over 500 campaigns this year where we go into deep analytics that are more than age and gender."

What is Big Data?
A panel on big data moderated by Barry Frey of the DPAA was tasked with defining big data. According to Chris Pizzurro of Canoe, "For us big data is about a ton of small data. We dig in and bring up insights from that. We measure each individual ad." Eric Schmitt of Allant had a slightly different view saying "We see big data and bigger data. Big data is 120 million TV households. Bigger data is activity data. We bring them together in a privacy safe way getting to audience based models across a range of platforms."

Sales Feels the Pressure

The pressures on the traditional TV sales model are coming from several angles. AMC’s Arlene Manos said that “TV advertising has to change. We didn't have the tools and weren't asked for the accountability but now we have accountability in digital and they want it in TV.” Mobi’s Seth Walters cast a more somber note explaining that “a clunky interface is part of the reason that viewers go OTT. Netflix is another reason. Roku is far easier to navigate and in some cases they are faster. Viewers can easily and quickly identify content that matters to them. What is the role of TV advertising once that occurs?” The sales solution? Brian Stempeck of The Trade Desk believes that it is “inevitable that TV will go programmatic.”

Despite all of the hand wringing I believe that traditional television has succeeded for over 60 years because it responds to change and continuously evolves. There has always been competition from other platforms from radio and print to digital devices. While we continue to grapple with how to evolve the business model in this changing environment, new successful solutions will be found. As Adam Lowy of Dish concluded,“Eventually we will get there. TV is the first screen.” I agree.

First published, in abbreviated form, on MediaBizBloggers.com