Intersection’s Total Measurement. Interview with Bella Nguyen, Director, Media Data Solutions.

Digital Out of Home (DOOH) is fast becoming a vital part of a media plan and Intersection is leading the way in measurement and innovation. Beth Nguyen, Intersection’s Director of Media Data Solutions, oversees all of her company’s media data measurement and attribution efforts from brand awareness to foot traffic to digital events to moving media to a new initiative that involves the pharma vertical.

Intersection, which positions itself as a publisher, offers a range of engaging content such as weather, time, factoids, art, notices of local events etc. But they also leverage all aspects of DOOH measurement that include both established currencies, such as from Geopath, and strategic partnerships that add a range of audience demographics such as the types of people who have seen the ads and what they do after exposure.

When it comes to metrics, Nguyen noted that, “We can measure attribution, one being website visitation. We've done a lot in the last year with different types of brands. We're able to pixel the brand's pages and see, based on the exposure, did they go to the website? Did they go to a booking confirmation page? It depends on the KPI.” She added that, “We're also able to measure foot traffic. We had a case study with a financial bank that's pretty well known in the city of Chicago and we were able to measure people who were exposed to the ad if they actually went to those bank locations.”

Intersection is also expanding into a range of other ad categories. “We're starting to measure script lift for the pharma category and we've also tapped into CPG sales live,” she explained, which are currently available on other advertising avenues but not in out of home … until now. Nguyen’s efforts enable the ability to, “measure if someone was exposed to a pharma campaign. Did they actually go to a health care provider who prescribed that specific drug? If not that drug, did it still drive visitation to a health care provider? We're super excited to tap into that.”

Historically, out of home was only able to measure static media. “Anything that was a fixed location,” she noted, “but digital out of home has evolved. With moving media, we're able to actually track the GPS data from vehicles which are publicly available by the transit authorities. Our bus measurement vendor street metrics has device ids so they're able to create view sheds and actually see if there was a device ID that was exposed to that bus at that given time. I worked for major news networks and music streaming companies. They had all of this. But now we're doing this for out of home.”

She noted that, “When people think about large formats, they associate it with billboards, which are impactful and have large formats. Moving media, particularly bus, also has large formats and what's really special about that is that it's moving through our cities which expand reach.” She has calculated that moving media on buses travels, “23 million miles driven in our cities. When you think about that number, it is super impactful for reach. We also observed over a billion impressions just in our major DMAs and markets over a full year. That is a really strong outcome.”

The data Intersection culls from all of their platforms offers a variety of uses. Nguyen explained that, “From a baseline, we can measure impressions, miles driven, frequency, the amount of time someone is exposed to the ad. We also have demographic data based on household census blocks and then to layer on top of it is someone is looking to really measure the effectiveness and has a certain KPI we're also able to measure web visitation and behaviors and foot traffic,” through geo location.

An intriguing case study involved a teeth aligners brand. “Their KPI was to drive visitation. They wanted to see if people went to their website and then actually end up going to a booking page for an appointment or to purchase the aligners. Their secondary KPI was on digital platforms to test their creative. We were actually able to do that for our bus creative, so we had four and at the end of the campaign we broke it out into overall results. How many people actually went to their page and then we broke it up by creative ABC and D and actually saw which creative was the most effective. The client ended up swapping out their creative mid campaign taking our recommendations and included a bigger and larger call to action to go on the website. The results back from the second study was just as effective, if not more.”

For Nguyen DOOH, “is going to be inclusive of everything. We're going to get to a point where people are going to be able to measure their entire out of home media plan and tack in digital TV, radio and be part of that holistic effectiveness. This is not just going to be for people like me or data analysts. It's going to be for sales folks, it's going to be for client success teams, it could be for the creative teams.  It's definitely going to be a tool, where it's going to be beyond just measurement and attribution.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Artwork by Charlene Weisler

 

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

 

Out of Home Will Reign Supreme in the Cookieless Future. An Interview with Chris Grosso, CEO of Intersection

Chris Grosso, the new Chief Executive Officer of Intersection, understands the role of urban OOH as an important component to an advertising campaign. 

His company, Intersection, “is an experience driven, out of home media technology company  focused on bringing programming, consumer amenities and advertising to cities,” he explained and added, “We are aiming to elevate the urban experience for consumers and advertisers.” His company, which reaches the 15 biggest cities in the U.S., offers a range of consumer services such as free internet access, such as through LinkNYC, real time information and way-finding products.

A Changing Media Ecosystem Based on Greater Privacy

In an emerging world of IDFA and the prospect of a cookieless future, there will be some media platforms that can easily pivot to this new reality. Out of Home is one of them. The shift from consumer opt out to consumer opt in creates an opportunity for a more passive form of collecting consumer data coupled with a platform the offers premium content. “If you advertise on a premium publisher you know the audience you're getting. You know that the audience is going to be high quality. I think that's got benefits for publishers, because the publishers get the full value of the audiences and they don't have these ad tech companies as middlemen,” he explained and added, “The notion of content and context becomes much, much more valuable and publishers that can deliver that kind of audience are going to be in a really good position.”

Privacy looms large as a challenge for many companies but Grosso is unconcerned because when it comes
to out of home, “You don't need to know who that person is you just need to know that people who were by your screen showed up at the store. You don't need to know anything about those people other than that and that's a very privacy friendly way.”

Intersection’s Offering

Intersection positions itself as a publisher that can offer a range of compelling content such as that found on LinkNYC which offers weather, time, factoids, art, notices of local events, etc. In addition, the company can offer a point of purchase opportunity for advertisers. “Say you're a beer company and want to reach people who are going to bars. You could buy a digital out of home campaign on our screens on Friday nights, right around the bar. I don't need a cookie to be able to get that audience, I can just get that audience, where they are at a logical place in a logical time,” he noted.

And the sun-setting of cookies poses no problem and even offers a compelling point of difference for out of home, according to Grosso. “I can put ads in the drugstore, but I also can put ads on digital out of home screens or even static out of home screens right outside the drugstore and again that's a powerful context, so I think location and context become really important in a world where you can't try to use cookies to track that kind of audience,” he shared.

Intersection’s Measurement

Measurement deliverables for advertisers include both established currencies and strategic partnerships. “We rely on Geopath which is an audited set of metrics for the out of home industry,” for reach, frequency and impressions, Grosso explained. “Geopath is the currency that people buy and sell on. We found that it was a good baseline. But you have to enhance on top of it. So we’ve put together an ecosystem of partners that can build on top of what you get from Geopath,” which includes more demographics – the types of people who have seen the ads and what they do after exposure.

One example is StreetMetrics for exterior buses. “We sell advertising on 10,000 buses in the United States and using StreetMetrics provides digital style measurement in attribution based on the data they collect,” using the GPS from the bus to match to the data they collect to better understand the audience, he noted.

Looking Ahead for Out of Home and Intersection

For Grosso, the future is bright with possibilities. “Valuable premium audience with differentiated content is going to be really, really successful,” he began, “That's going to be true in the digital space and that's going to be true in the physical space.” He pointed out that the opportunities are there for both big and small companies. Big platforms like Facebook or Google, “will continue to be hugely successful because you have lots of data and big audiences that are highly engaged. If you're a specialized vertical publisher with good audience you're also going to be successful. The premium out of home companies that have assets that can reach hard to reach audiences with really good creative in contextual brand safe environments are also going to be hugely successful because so much advertising is targeted by location and without a cookie trying to find those people on a mobile phone, is going to be very hard, I can guarantee you.”

He sees that, “People are coming back to cities and going out frequently. Advertisers want to reach those folks at critical points throughout the day, so high quality out of home publishers are going to really thrive. Out of home will become a great way to add highly localized reach for any of these marketers because if they want to target locations or consumers who congregate and specific neighborhoods, the best way to do it has always been out of home, but now it'll be the only way to do it. Out of home will continue to be the most cost effective, privacy friendly and brand safe way, if you want to target a geography,” he concluded.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

 

Post-COVID Data Proves Gyms Are Back, and They Are Packed

Americans are getting back on their feet … and getting to the gym, according to Lorraine Pyne, Vice President, Sales and Marketing at Zoom Media. Her company owns and operates GymTV, which broadcasts in 5000+ health clubs across the U.S., Canada and the U.K. A preliminary look at traffic data indicates that month over month, not only is gym usage increasing at a healthy pace, but Americans are slated to match and possibly exceed pre-COVID level gym attendance by July.

This is a first-look at post-COVID gym traffic. Following up on this optimistic trend, Zoom Media is partnering with Kantar, a leading marketing research and insights company, to launch a qualitative study on behaviors and attitudes of those who are now getting back to the gym. This information will then be combined with Kantar's large quantitative base of data. This synergy helps deliver more granularity in the measurement. "That is what we get from our Kantar partnership," Pyne explained, "They've done a great job in providing us the data that we need to propose our media impact and report results to our clients more granularly."

Will Koning, Chief Data Officer at Kantar added, "We collect check-in data from gyms and use primary research data to convert the check-in data to audience insights including behavior, dwell time, ability to view GymTV, etc." From there, the data is converted to impressions, reach, frequency, and other standard media planning metrics.

Zoom Media's Traffic Tracker

The first step in this marketplace analysis was a review of Zoom Media's traffic tracker of the 3700+ GymTV locations across the United States. "It shows average monthly gym visits measured pre-COVID all the way to date," Pyne stated. The results are very encouraging and point to a strong rebound in gym attendance."

In terms of the major takeaways, Pyne shared that, "From the data, we are seeing that there is a high return to and enthusiasm for the gym. In just the month of April, we saw over 51 million visits to our GymTV locations nationally." Of course, it would be unfair to compare these results to pre-COVID level but, Pyne asserted, "Our latest gym attendance, even with capacity limits, is already at 65% of visits pre-COVID. Therefore, what we are projecting at this point, based on the positive data trends we are seeing, is that with 100% of our partner gyms open and expanding capacities as well as our month-to-month increases, that gym attendance will be close to pre-COVID levels by July 1, 2021."

This data reflects a national footprint across all 50 states and in over 190 DMAs. There was some regional variation in the data based on capacity limits, but "we've seen an increase across most markets if not all," Pyne added. Demographically, the initial traffic when gyms first started reopening was largely from young men, "but now we are definitely seeing a balance between men and women."

Koning noted that, "The audience currency we produce is from the gym chains. They provide the check-ins and we process that data using data science techniques to ascribe the data that we get from the primary research. "Check-in data alone doesn't tell the full story of the visit, therefore, ascribing the check-in data enables Kantar to ascertain behaviors such as the areas of the gym where activity took place and duration of the stay, "whether they have been wearing headphones, so whether they can hear the ambient audio or not," among other behaviors, "so as to get a very comprehensive t understanding of who has seen the content and ads on GymTV and for what period of time so we can determine actual impressions, demographic breakdown and whether they were paying attention to the screens," he explained, including recall.

Next Steps

Zoom Media and Kantar are about to launch the second phase of this qualitative study in early June which is much more in-depth. This portion of the study will incorporate a range of data sets including, "Google Mobility data to track and accurately report changes in behavior based on time, day, duration, demographic and frequency which allows us to model behavior even more granularly," Koning shared, adding that Kantar can also add audience data that Zoom Media gets directly from their partners.

"We are doing a custom study of consumer insights that gives us a better analysis of the behavior and interests of our gym goers. We will be able to put those two data sets together to tell a really robust story on our audience. Not just a quantifiable one but a qualitative one," Pyne noted, "We consider demographics to be a bit antiquated. It is more viable for brands to look at audiences based on lifestyle and interests and it gives our clients much more opportunity to really connect with their audience and show that the brand understands them and what drives them."

Feeling Optimistic

The surge in gym traffic is no surprise to Pyne. "We expect to see unprecedented traffic to gyms in the fall and winter," she predicted. "Because of the pandemic, the awareness and the importance of a healthy, active lifestyle is higher than ever before." And with the current strong growth in gym attendance, Pyne sees it as, "the light that we have all been waiting for. It is a sign that life is finally returning, maybe a new normal, and people are getting out of the house. The increase in gym traffic shows us that more and more people are not just going outside again, they are prioritizing their health."

After a tough year, the massive adoption of healthy, active lifestyles represents a move (or rather, a sprint) in the right direction.

 

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

 

Measuring Post-COVID Revitalization Using DOOH Traffic

How can we best predict the timing of a post-COVID recovery? One metric in particular may hold the key. A recent study by mfour and VistarMedia examining Digital Out of Home (DOOH) traffic (as defined by the number of unique devices observed surrounding DOOH venues) reveal an increase in consumer confidence and activity as we enter the post COVID era.

The Study Reveals a Return to ‘Normal’

From every indication, consumers are ready to resume their lives and are becoming more comfortable going to places they had stopped visiting during COVID. While this varies by market, the overall indicators show greater traffic and visitation to once shunned venues and businesses.

Consumers are getting out and about. Comparing March 2020 to March 2021, foot fall traffic is significantly up with +70% growth year to year. Notably, this is even greater traffic than pre-pandemic levels, demonstrating a great pent up demand by consumers to return to and even exceed pre-COVID activity and spending levels.

“Three quarters of Americans admitted spending too much time online this past year, according to a Harris Poll and OAAA survey. Digital fatigue is real and people are tired of staring at their screens,” said Michael Rosen, chief revenue officer with Intersection. “As vaccinations increase and newly issued guidelines are welcomed with warmer weather, a newfound appreciation for being outside will arise. This is where the inherent advantages of OOH vastly outweigh other advertising mediums, especially for those whose ads can be skipped.”

Consumers Are Returning to Activities

Activity is surging at recreational locations, gas stations, billboards, grocery and liquor stores, malls, bars, QSR and casual dining and office buildings where people are venturing out, shopping, dining and returning to the office. An encouraging 98% of those surveyed visited a DOOH venue type in the past month, leaving their homes and in view of digital out-of-home screens.

Venues such as gyms, subways, sports entertainment centers and bus shelters are on the verge of rebounding while airports, hotels, train stations, salons and educational centers will take a little longer to return to normal. But consumer optimism is high for even these categories. When asked, consumers say that they intend to visit airports after the pandemic (increasing +98% from November to April), transit stations (+82%) and taxis (+81%).

Consumers Are On the Move

After months of sheltering in place, consumers indicate that they are ready to travel. The majority of them are walking and driving more or the same amount as they were at this time last year (85% and 80% respectively). And while public transportation is down, about half of consumers are still using it as much as, if not more, than they were last year (52% and 51% respectively).

“Bus exteriors in particular have been able to connect brands with local audiences throughout the pandemic,” said Rosen. “With expansive transportation networks ranging from city centers to residential neighborhoods and highways in between, buses can be turned into massive media networks that reach enormous audiences - in some cases up to 98% of a metro area population - that other forms of local media just can’t. And as transit ridership continues to increase by the week, there’s a real opportunity for brands to capitalize on the attention of target audiences, both above and below ground, before inventory, especially big station dominations and street furniture takeovers, begin selling out as brands shift OOH strategies.”

For brands, this means that they can effectively get their message out by using urban panels, billboards, taxi tops, gas stations and other place-based and point-of-purchase inventory that capitalize on these transportation patterns. Focusing on context and place captures consumer attention, awareness and retention with a population starved for entertainment and experiences.

Consumers are Spending More

An indication of economic resurgence is when consumers feel comfortable spending again. According to mfour, almost 75% of those polled indicated that they are spending more or the same as they did last year at this time on both essentials and non-essentials. This includes Groceries (+86%), Gas (+71%), Restaurants/Dining Out (+64%), Clothing and Accessories (+57%) and Personal Care and Beauty (+52%). There is also increased spending on Entertainment (+40%), Over-the-Counter Medications (+37%) and Home Improvement Products (+36%).

Reaching Consumers Today

Being in the right place at the right time is important for brands. The study revealed that 98% of consumers have visited at least one DOOH venue in the past month with 84% recalled seeing a digital OOH ad. Advertisers can leverage this by using DOOH screens in bars, restaurants (casual dining and QSR), malls, convenience stores, gas stations, grocery stores and more to reach consumers on the path to purchase.

And people are ready to resume normalcy by traveling, visiting stores and going to an office. The study found that +43% are not hesitant to resume any of their normal routines (up from 35% in January). Only 5% indicate that they are hesitant to return to all of their normal routines.

Starved for stimuli outside the home, consumers say that they have a very positive attitude towards DOOH advertising. A majority (+61%) feels that it is appropriate for brands to be advertising on indoor and/or outdoor screens during COVID-19. In fact, sentiment was higher for DOOH among consumers than for other forms of advertising.

When comparing DOOH to non-DOOH ads side by side, DOOH ads ranked higher in preference, environment and relate-ability. And 58% of consumers say out-of-home ads are the most trustworthy compared to TV (55%), Mobile (43%, Social (39% and Desktop (34%). For brands, all of this positivity this means that they can capitalize on this effective association to deliver their messages.

Next Steps for Brands

mfour advises that advertisers craft their message to the moment of consumer contact by enhancing moments of relief and helping consumers return to normalcy with a message of positivity and hope.

 

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

 

Tying Attribution to OOH Sampling. An Interview with Marci Weisler of Vengo Labs

Marci Weisler (no relation, though we tried to figure it out), Chief Commercial Officer, Vengo Labs, works for a uniquely situated company in the out of home space. Billed a, “retail and marketing tech company that is reimagining how brands connect with consumers,” Marci noted that this technology “bridges the gap between digital and real world experiences by combining retail with DOOH media and product sampling.”

Vengo is actually a network of over 1200 mini interactive digital vending machines at gyms, hotels, colleges and corporate locations in major DMAs. Future plans include expanding into retail stores. The company offers a consumer the ability to sample products from personal tech (headphones and chargers) to beauty and wellness, to CPG and non-perishable food. 

According to Marci, the data they collect is opt-in via consumer interactions with surveys and quizzes, also collecting emails and/or phone numbers on a campaign by campaign basis. The “cloud based Vengo Information Portal (VIP) tracks retail (product inventory, sales), all media (impressions delivered, screen interactions) and sampling campaigns (samples vended, opt-ins),” she explained. The campaign level data is shared with Vengo’s clients on a campaign by campaign basis.   “On the sampling side, Vengo is closing the loop enabling brands to understand ROI and retarget consumers in ways they have not been able to use in the past, and giving them the opportunity to connect with consumers post-sample and drive to purchase/conversion,” she stated.

While Marci believes that Vengo is unique in the combination of retail, DOOH media and trackable product sampling, their competitive set varies by product category. In fact, Vengo sees them as potential partners such as in the following categories:

Ø  Sampling--in-store reps handing out samples, sampling companies like Birchbox, sampling-only kiosks.

Ø  DOOH Media--other networks and media.

Ø  Retail/vending--Zoom Systems, micro-markets

The retail ecosystem changing, she noted, with consumers spending less time in brick and mortar stores and making purchasing decisions everywhere.  “Vengo meets consumers at contextually relevant times in their day, aligning product availability with the time they need them most.  For example, in the gym locker room they can purchase headphones or trial a new beauty product, while seeing an ad for a new wellness supplement. We are also working with retailers to enhance the in-store experience and drive engagement at the point of sale,” she added.

Vengo is also going cross platform with connections to mobile devices through geo-fencing as well as marketing initiatives such as mobile coupon codes redeemable at Vengo, or sampling opportunities that require taking a quiz and giving your email address to get a free sample which can then result in another coupon code to use for next retail purchase of the product.

But there are challenges. She explained that with a big hardware component, there are challenges expanding the network (as opposed to building traffic to a web site or mobile app), “but now that our network has surpassed over 1200, we are ramping quickly.  We also have a size constraint since our machines are compact and take only two square feet of wall space, but our ex-aerospace engineering team has maximized the ability to put a high quantity of product into a small space.”

Advantages include the ability to engage consumers digitally--whether through sampling or interactive DOOH media, collect actionable marketing data to convert “trailers” to buyers and drive product trial and calculate ROI on sampling programs. “For retailers we provide retail tech solutions that make shopping in-store fun and compelling--and provide metrics-based sampling programs that drive in-store purchase,” Marci stated.

And what she terms as, “critically interesting” is Vengo’s ability to “tie attribution to sampling which never existed before. For that reason we got a major investment from Arcade Beauty,, the world's leading manufacturer of beauty samples and are working to reimagine the space for brands and for retailers. We've got some exciting campaign results,” to be released in the possible future.

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

How to De-Mystify Digital Out of Home

As technological advancements and big data change the ability of legacy media to compete in the new ecosystem, we are finding that digital out of home (DOOH) is becoming a competitive option for advertisers and brands.  But how does one overcome old mindsets, ingrained buying prejudices and still-to-be-solved challenges in this space?  That was the focus of a recent Advertising Club panel titled De-Mystifying Digital Out of Home.  From the agency side, Andea Campbell, Partner and Director, Analytics & Insights, MEC and from the platform side, Ian Mirmelstein, Senior Vice President, Digital Engagement, AdSpace Networks shared their views on the opportunities, challenges and future of DOOH.

Opportunities and Advantages
More and more, DOOH is being discussed in the same conversations as digital and social media and that, according to Campbell, is a good sign for its growth and acceptance because it creates a "natural similarity."  Also a plus:  Malls are valuable end points for advertising because they offer recency messaging that occurs close to the end of the shopper consideration funnel.  In addition, Campbell noted, DOOH is "100% viewable and offers a fraud-free space."

Through its use of mobile location data, DOOH is able to track the daily consumer journey which takes it down to a close one-to-one measurement. "If a consumer enters one of our mall locations, they probably saw the ad and we can then push messages," Mirmelstein said.

Growth in both mobile and programmatic can benefit DOOH in the future.  "Mobile can be used for different types of measurement," Campbell stated.  "Programmatic developments and developments in mobile provide the perfect storm for an evolution in this space that can translate into bigger dividends for the channel."

Challenges and How to Overcome Them
So, in a world where media planners are spending valuable time policing their buys, why isn't DOOH more than a last on/first off media spend?  One of the big challenges is data and measurement, though Mirmelstein believes "measurement is getting better through the mobile device."  But a bigger issue is that DOOH is not able to get the exact return on ad spend which hampers its ability to fully compete with those media platforms than can post against this information.

"Brands need to be able to report back to their clients, and the market mix modeling in DOOH won't look good," Campbell asserted.  "It doesn't perform in the ad spend paradigm.  We need to look at sales lift and we can talk about attitudinal studies and brand awareness."

Of course, old mindsets are the hardest to change.  "A big challenge is the status quo," Mirmelstein said, noting that media spending is often a history of who has been bought in the past.  So it becomes more of a rote exercise of repeating what was done before.

To change that, "you need to have the right people in the room," Campbell said.  In addition to the usual participants, try to include analytics, investments and planning, for example.  "Also," she noted, "big holding companies have approval lists.  Get in the door and become an approved vendor.  Think of yourself as a digital vendor."

These things take time and one must remain philosophical.  "Nothing is perfect," she continued.  "Mobile isn't perfect.  If you are looking to poke a hole, you will find it.  The expectation has to be that we are as possible as possible now."

Next Steps to Success
The best way to overcome the status quo is to change the conversation.  "Don't talk about foot traffic," Campbell warned.  That is an old metric that is antiquated in today's digital world.  "Talk about viewability, reach, no fraud, the funnel and attribution."  There also needs to be transparency in measurement.  Be open to doing more custom research.

When it comes to the creative, "cater it to the environment," Mirmelstein suggested.
Getting in front of the planning cycle is another consideration, although, as Campbell explained, planning cycles vary by agency, category and brand. "Agencies also have lunch-and-learn meetings, so go in and present," she said, adding, "agencies have a test and learn budget," which can help introduce the value of DOOH for an agency.

"Not only do I see DOOH as an integral part of video strategies at agencies in 2018, but it will be viewed more so on a neutral playing field with other forms of digital video," she concluded.  "At the end of the day, the closer it leans into the science part of the art and science (which is at the crux of edia buying and planning) the more opportunity there will be for the medium."

Being open to the possibilities and getting out the message of the promise of DOOH as an addition to the current buy may, in fact, be the best route to success.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com