Tech Talks: The Next Big OOH Trend

By Nicole Randall, OAAA Communications Senior Director

OAAA regularly features Thought Leadership Q&A from its committee members.

This month, OAAA spotlights the Innovations Committee, asking members, “What is the next big OOH tech trend?”

Lawrence Chan, Cuebiq

The application of mobile technology to enhance and prove the medium’s effectiveness is the next big thing in OOH. New technology, such as location intelligence, allows OOH media companies to expand their traditional toolkits to leverage strategies and metrics until now limited to the mobile/digital world.

Powerful applications include:

  • App download measurement as a result of an OOH campaign
  • TV tune-in measurement as a result of an OOH campaign
  • Turnkey buying of attribution on OOH platforms
  • Mobile retargeting of consumers exposed to OOH advertising, increasing effectiveness of the campaign they are exposed to

I have seen these strategies produce incredible results for the campaigns. For example, a leading fitness brand wanted to drive visits to its location and launched an OOH campaign supported by mobile retargeting of the consumers exposed to the billboards. While each channel had a positive performance independently, the combination of OOH and mobile retargeting had even greater impact with skyrocketing lift, thus proving the immense value of a multi-platform strategy. By combining mobile targeting capabilities with a rich location data set, the brand can continue to leverage this tactic across future campaigns.

Ian Dallimore, Lamar Advertising Company

It’s not a surprise that wearables will continue to grow in 2019 (56.7 million US Adults via eMarketer) as we’ve seen brands like Adidas, Under Armour, North Face, Nike, and Levi’s integrate technology to better understand its products and the people purchasing them. Advertising on wearables is still rare, but using the devices to enhance branded experiences makes sense. Brands use wearables to enhance brand message, either as a sponsor of an experience or event, or as a way to display brand values. For example, Adidas utilized RFID technology to provided exclusive content about the AM4MLS shoe to customers.

In addition, Levi’s partnered with Google’s Jacquard Thread for the Commuter Trucker Jacket, which allowed the consumer to operate multiple smart functions like audio control, directions, and screening calls through motions on the jacket. These are just a few examples of how apparel brands focused on providing smarter technology in 2018.

Moreover, the combination of RFID technology and augmented reality will allow the partnership between wearables and OOH to soar in 2019. For example, if a bus shelter with an RFID reader identifies that a consumer nearby wearing an Adidas shoe just ran five miles, that RFID reader could trigger a push notification onto that consumer’s mobile device with exclusive content and relevant advertising. In a more innovative example, if a digital bus shelter with an RFID reader recognizes a consumer nearby is wearing a Nike Connect NBA Jersey, the OOH screen can trigger creative specific to that consumer’s jersey in real time. Just as we’ve seen the marriage between mobile and OOH, wearable technology and OOH can target consumers in a unique, memorable, and impactful way.

Mike Galkin, Branded Cities

What I would love to see trend this year and beyond is the true scaling of all the amazing tech initiatives out in the OOH/DOOH space today. As an industry, we are well-positioned to create exciting and buzz-worthy campaigns, but now is the time to make them more than one-hit wonders!

Jonathan Gudai, Adomni

Audience data will increasingly be part of the OOH sales and reporting process. Data sourced from mobile devices in an anonymous, consumer-safe way will converge the world of digital online media with OOH media. When OOH ads are able to be bought and sold with audience-based targeting and analytics, performance marketers can bring many of the same tactics and KPIs to OOH that have become the norm in online/digital media. The $8 billion annual US OOH industry is poised for hypergrowth. Mobile data can provide the rocket fuel.

Jeff Gunderman, EYE Corp Media

Maybe location-based marketing is not a trend since that’s been an OOH advantage from the beginning of time (sorry digital growth leaders; been-there, done-that, and continue to deliver that better than anyone else). That said, we are getting much better at using technology to deliver more relevant ads at the right place and time to the right audience. We have “place” or “location” locked down, but the tech trend to watch is the growing use of mobile devices to identify where the target consumer is at a given time so that impactful OOH ads can be delivered with much greater relevance to the audience viewing them at any given time.

: The first great case study showcasing real-time ad triggers as a new trend that I remember was a weather trigger less than a couple years ago, and today OOH operators have executed countless campaigns utilizing real-time ad triggers and customization driven by RSS feeds or other online data sources, including live scores, traffic reports, weather triggers, and social media feeds. Real-time ad triggers will be a growing “trend” in our industry, but it has staying power and will fast become a standard offering across much of the OOH ecosystem.

Interactivity is a growing trend as place-based digital networks are being deployed or retrofitted with touchscreen capabilities to directly engage audiences. Media operators are utilizing touch and other interactive functions like cameras, gesture sensors, and more to truly engage audiences. This interactive engagement trend is growing quickly and will continue to add relevance to our medium as the technology capabilities grow and infrastructure is deployed.

Shoppable Ads most recently introduced by Google on Google Images following capabilities already in place by Instagram, Pinterest, and others is a trend to watch. There have been a few early capabilities showing app integration with OOH from the likes of Shazam, but this is one to watch closely as technology will continue to get us closer to driving attribution and shoppable ads or images will be in our future.

Attribution continues to be the holy grail, and tech trends in the OOH space from a growing use of mobile data to understanding location to the layering of 3rd party data to identifying audiences continues to grow and move to a mainstream offering or requirement of for many OOH networks.

Stephanie Gutnik, BroadSign

Automation, data, programmatic, and dynamic creative have been hot topics over the past couple of years. As these new technologies and processes are being implemented, the next big OOH trend will be more logistical in nature – encompassing the industry’s digital transformation and change management of such a major shift.

Digital transformation in this instance does not refer to the conversion of classic faces to digital displays, but the adoption of workflows and mindsets present in other media, providing OOH with a more prominent seat at the table in cross-channel campaigns and marketing strategies.

Ben Putland, Grand Visual

The next big tech trend for OOH will be deeper integrations of siloed systems. This will allow the medium to move from the “program-manual” position we occupy today and transition to an automated ecosystem that will stimulate revenue growth and improve profitability at a rate not yet seen. It will take a two or more years for a significant percentage of the industry to reach this position.

In three to five years time, I expect to see the application of a deep neural network artificial intelligence (AI). It will be able to plan, buy, and distribute content on the fly to meet the clients campaign objectives more effectively. To get there we need to have; the deep integrations in place and optimized, low level tasks are automated, on-boarded new talent to build and support it, provided the AI with enough data so it can learn, be able to pivot quicker than ever before, investment to support it and the ambition to make it happen.

 

[wpforms id=”9787″]

 


Paid Advertisement

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Comments are closed.