Digital out-of-home (DOOH) is a new technology that allows the use of digital signage and screens to advertise and promote goods and services. Recently, DOOH has become very popular in various business fields such as marketing, advertising, entertainment, etc. In this article, we will look at what DOOH is, how it can be used to achieve business goals, its advantages and disadvantages, relevant global trends, and the current market situation.

Basics of DOOH

DOOH includes digital billboards on the streets, screens in the underground, interactive designs in public spaces, and much more. The targeting and analytics capabilities of outdoor advertising campaigns are rapidly approaching the accuracy of online advertising. DOOH makes it possible to target ads by geolocation, time of day, gender, age and interests, and to show ads when the proportion of the target audience is higher near the advertising structure.

You can create and run a DOOH campaign yourself on programmatic platforms – services for the automatic purchase of advertising (such as MediaMath, AdRoll, or Adobe Advertising Cloud). These platforms allow you to set the target audience, display time and locations for placement. The basic payment model is auction-based; the platform determines in real time how many of the target audience will see the advert and chooses the optimal moment to show the advert.

Information about the audience is collected using a Wi-Fi monitoring system that identifies the user by the MAC address of a phone or other gadget. The companies also collect operator data on geolocation and video analytics from cameras that are embedded in the advertising structure. It is noteworthy that all user information is anonymous.

The network of digital screens can also use data from the Internet, such as the current weather, the situation on the road or the score in a match. At the same time, it can be integrated with the company’s information system.

Modern DOOH campaigns are often built according to the following lifecycle:

1. Selection of the address program;
2. Calculation of the forecast using retrodata analysis;
3. Purchasing on programmatic platforms and online targeting;
4. Instant retargeting on the Internet;
5. Analysis and evaluation of the final audience;
6. Evaluation of effectiveness and conversion.

Global Trends in DOOH and Modern Ways of Working with Data
Nowadays, there are multiple universal DOOH trends that are applicable all around the world. They are:

1. The use of programmatic platforms for sales;
2. Omnichannel;
3. Building probabilistic models of interest from historical data;
4. Static heat maps;
5. Dynamic heat maps based on GPS technologies.

If you want your DOOH campaign to be successful, it should be in line with all the leading trends listed above. Furthermore, you have to be acquainted with the most advanced ways of working with data, which are:

• Video analytics (recognising cars, brands and licence plates online);
• WiFi traps and MAC address analysis;
• Bluetooth tags;
• Cell phone tower data.

Current Market Situation

At the end of 2020, the Russian advertising market did not decline as much as many foreign markets. Its total volume decreased by only 4%, whereas DOOH decreased by 22%. During the lockdown, audiences were confined to their homes and advertisers postponed placements or cancelled campaigns. However, from the end of 2020, the market began to recover rapidly and resumed its previous pace.

Moreover, as former Deloitte’s analysts have figured out, it is to digital outdoor advertising that the audience remains most loyal today. The company notes that citizens tend to respond positively to those types of advertising that do not interfere with their personal space. In this sense, billboards on the street beat many other channels: they do not interrupt your film and do not distract from business like intrusive telephone marketing. At the same time, DOOH currently remains one of the most visible to audiences, ranking in the top three alongside TV advertising and in-store promotions.

In Russia, the interest in DOOH advertising has been recently fueled and its share of operators’ revenues grew from 25% to 31% on average.

Targeting

One of the key DOOH concepts, targeting is the process of selecting the audience to which advertising messages or content are delivered. Targeting can be based on various criteria such as gender, age, location, interests, online behaviour, etc. The aim of targeting is to identify the target audience as accurately as possible and to show them exactly the advertising messages that are of interest to them.

The simplest targeting is targeting by structures and their location in the user’s path or near the advertised object. There is also more complex targeting using heat maps: the city map is coloured according to the consumer’s chosen parameters (e.g. social demographics or interests). As a result, advertisers can target their advertising not to a specific location, but directly to the desired audience, which greatly influences the final result. Today, the classic DOOH is gradually transitioning into the programmatic one, the principal advantage of which is that targeting can be adjusted in real time. One of the breakthrough features of DOOH is the technology for maximising target reach. This means that an ad is only broadcast when the target audience is present in the viewing area of a particular advertising screen.

An example of a targeting map. Source: Mapping Analytics

Let’s have a look at Profitator’s case study with the Spirit.Fitness chain:

The agency ran two advertising campaigns in DOOH (88 and 90 screens respectively). The target audience was men and women aged 20 to 60 with an interest in “sports and active recreation”. The average share of the brand’s target audience in the stream was 19%. The mechanism used in February reached more than 1.5 million users and increased the target audience share within the placement to 44%, while the advertising campaign in March reached more than 1.8 million users and increased the share to 50%. The ROI for both flights was 161% and 219% respectively. It is an astonishing result reached thanks to DOOH and proper targeting.

Key Analytical Indicators
The success of a DOOH campaign is usually assessed according to the following analytical indicators:

1. OTS – the number of contacts with the audience;
2. Reach – the number of unique contact with the audience;
3. Frequency / Effective Frequency – an average number of contacts with advertising material per person;
4. Target Audience – the percentage of the advertiser’s preferred audience (men, women, football players, etc.)
5. Affinity Index (AFF) – the indicator of audience shift towards an increase in the target audience in relation to the average distribution of target audience along the way.

The effectiveness of an advertising campaign can be also evaluated by three measurement products:

1. Brand Lift – evaluates the improvement of brand metrics (brand awareness, ad recall, product consideration, and purchase intent) through online surveys;
2. Sales Lift – assesses how DOOH helped increase sales;
3. Completion Rate – measures the contribution of DOOH in attracting offline and online visitors.

Russia is rightfully considered one of the world leaders and trendsetters in DOOH, so let’s look at some real examples of how to evaluate the effectiveness of advertising campaigns in this very market:

The Carousel (a Russian supermarket chain) advertising campaign used Sales Lift to evaluate its effectiveness. Such an approach was applied together with the use of business data. According to the results of the campaign, the increase in transactions was 27.9%. It turned out that DOOH can have a significant impact on the growth of traffic, transactions and new customers. In addition, the flexibility of programmatic settings allows optimisation of the campaign in many ways (change of creatives, time targeting).
The Tinkoff (the world’s largest online bank) project team increased the completion rate by using their own pixel – simple and open enough to be tested even in the banking sector. The pixel was installed on the Tinkoff website. According to the results of the advertising campaign, the use of DOOH provided a 43% increase in conversion to the site.

Conclusion

Without a doubt, DOOH offers a plethora of competitive advantages, combining the benefits of outdoor and online advertising:

• Large audience reach;
• Fast launch and customisation of the ad;
• Collection of data to analyse effectiveness;
• Budget optimisation and real-time bid adjustment based on audience reach;
• Dynamic video attracts attention and is not blocked by the user’s programs as on the Internet;
• Suitable for any business regardless of size and advertising budget;
• Flexible conditions – you can run a national ad or a small campaign for 1-2 days with placement on a billboard.

However, there are some drawbacks, such as deployment in large cities only (due to expensive hardware and software) and the problems of identifying the entire traffic. Despite this, DOOH is an important tool for promoting products and services in today’s digital world. Through the use of digital technology, DOOH enables companies to achieve their objectives such as increasing sales, raising brand awareness and attracting new customers. In addition, DOOH can be used to create a more personalised experience for consumers, which can lead to increased loyalty and repeat purchases. Overall, DOOH is an indispensable tool for successful business promotion in the modern world riddled with digital technologies.