Download this article as a PDFI was standing on a station platform a while ago, later than I wanted to be, watching the departure board tick over. Next to it a large digital screen was running an advert, then a travel update, then another advert. I must have looked at it a dozen times without meaning to, because there was nothing else to do. That is the whole idea, and it is a good one.
Out-of-home advertising is not billboards and bus stops anymore. In a world where most of us spend a large chunk of the day out of the house, it has grown into something far cleverer, and the digital version, DOOH, uses technology to catch people while they are on the move, on the way to work or wandering around the shops.
Going digital with OOH
Digital out-of-home reaches around seventy percent of people when they are outside, and it works because it is placed where it matters, close to where people actually buy things. These screens are not scattered at random. They are put in specific spots to catch the right eyes, and the message on them is big, bold and simple, one clear idea and an image that stops you. Better still, the content can be shaped to feel relevant to a particular place, which is what makes it stick.
The best locations are the ones where people have a moment to look, the train stations, the shopping centres, the sports stadiums. In those places a screen can do more than sell to you. It can hand you something useful, a travel update or a piece of local information, and become a small, welcome part of your day. Compare that with an online ad that gets blocked or swiped away in irritation. A DOOH screen is simply there, in front of your audience, impossible to close.
It is also kinder to a budget than people assume. Adverts rotate across the same digital screen, so the space and the cost are shared. And with programmatic DOOH the ads appear automatically at the time and place your audience is most likely to see them, which means your money is spent where it will actually do some work rather than sprayed at everyone.
Looking for a solution?
At Hayward Miller we help businesses make real use of DOOH, opening up premium advertising space to smaller companies and agencies that once assumed it was out of reach. The platform we work with takes the pain out of buying, planning and managing a campaign, pairing programmatic efficiency with genuinely premium quality.
If digital out-of-home fits the way you are thinking about your marketing, come and talk to us. We are happy to walk you through how it could change your approach.
