Digital Out-Of-Home Advertising During Covid-19 And Beyond

When COVID-19 forced many businesses to shut down and residents to stay home it became apparent that every industry was deeply impacted, especially the advertising industry. The global out-of-home media, in particular, took a hit in the initial COVID-19 wave, although with many restrictions lifted in local areas, it’s recovering nicely.

Although digital out-of-home fared better than traditional OOH it still experienced many shifts over the last 6 months. While we expect the OOH industry to fully recover and continue to see year-over-year growth, COVID-19 has brought even more attention to digital out-of-home – its added feature where content can be promptly changed by the touch of a button.

The world has seen several changes to health and safety guidelines and due to DOOH’s added feature, we’ve been able to constantly see these updates in our new norm lives. Research also shows that during the COVID-19 period, it was found that six out of 10 grocery store shoppers were exposed to OOH advertising on their way to the store. This is compared to seven out of 10 grocery store shoppers who saw an OOH message before COVID-19. Now, it has been found that OOH is reaching eight out of 10 customers.

Someday soon, we hope timely messages about high-demand products will evolve from the availability of anti-bacterial hand sanitiser to special summer offers on ice cream.

What is DOOH?

Digital out-of-home advertising uses digital screens in high-traffic areas to deliver media and content to people. It’s a form of outdoor advertising that can help reach target personas wherever they are. Digital out-of-home advertising includes digital billboards, digital street furniture, digital transit, and digital place-based media.

Here are 5 benefits of using DOOH advertising:

Cost-Effective

In many ways, digital advertising can be more cost-effective. Production costs are cheaper, in that there is no printing required. Digital advertising also allows for greater flexibility when it comes to the length and timing of a campaign. Production and placement schedules are far more flexible for digital out-of-home, which means a digital advert can begin and end on whichever day you want. As such, you only pay for the weeks, days or hours that your campaign will actually be effective.

Targeted But Not Intrusive

Digital out-of-home advertising delivers the right message, at the right time, at the right place to reach your specific audience. It offers highly targeted and relevant advertising, much like social media advertising but the criteria used are more environmental than personal, leading to relevant advertising that doesn’t cross a line into intrusion. Ad targeting is based largely on location and time, or on demographics and behaviours identified via anonymous aggregated tracking eg direction of the journey.

Unskippable and Ad-block-proof

The people that are around a digital display, will see it – there are no ad-blockers, no below-the-fold positions, no skip feature, no issue of users switching over to a different app or tab.

Point Of Sale

Advertisers can use digital out-of-home near the point of sale to effectively drive people into stores. Because of the flexible and dynamic nature of digital, brands can use time-based and environment-based triggers to encourage ‘here and now’ sales. For example, a product advertisement at a shopping centre is an effective way to get people to visit your store and increase sales, revenue or to build your brand.

Integration and Interaction

Not only can you display digital posters you can integrate social media, countdowns, live updates, conditional content (weather, temp), outdoor connect/RSS WiFi/touch-screen. Interactive content also allows user input to manipulate or change the content on the screen by interacting either via a mobile application, social media, or other mechanisms.

With all of these benefits and the signs of continued year-over-year growth, there’s never been a better time to leverage digital out-of-home for your future marketing efforts.

Check out our DOOH presentation below or download here for more information…

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