Leveraging Data to Run Wildly Successful OOH Campaigns

In today’s economic environment, marketing departments are under mounting pressure to prove that every dollar of their budget offers a clear return on investment (ROI). It’s no wonder data-driven campaigns are on the rise — especially when it comes to broadening a brand’s media mix and measuring performance. At the same time, digital channels such as Facebook and Google have significantly increased in cost while simultaneously experiencing a decline in performance, making digital campaign efficiency even harder to attain.

Fortunately, new advances in outdoor advertising fill this gap. Out-of-home (OOH) advertising is the most cost-effective advertising medium with a proven high rate of return. While it may be the world’s oldest media, access to data has completely modernized how OOH can be used. Here’s a look at how data can help advertisers set their 2022 advertising campaigns up for success.

Optimize Campaigns by Conducting Research and Analyzing Performance
With data-driven OOH campaigns, advertisers can plan high-performing campaigns and maximize their budgets by leveraging audience, market, pricing, and performance data. In fact, advertisers have an entire toolkit of data to help inform ad-buying decisions.

• Audience Movement Patterns: By looking at audience movement data, advertisers can reach specific target audiences for both digital and traditional OOH campaigns. This allows advertisers to select billboard locations and markets with the highest likelihood of reaching their high-priority audiences — which, with the right OOH buying platform partner, can be built on demographics, lifestyle and lifestage, behavioral patterns, dining habits, and more. Such data improves a campaign’s ROI by ensuring ads are being seen by the right consumers.
• Audience Purchasing Habits: What tendencies do customers have when purchasing products and services? It’s a question that advertisers haven’t traditionally been able to answer with OOH — a medium which advertisers have historically relied on geographic and census-based data in their decision making. That’s all changed. OOH advertisers can now tap into the buying habits of target customers in order to drive more sales. They have effectively gained valuable insights into consumer shopping preferences and brand affinities. With this newfound access to purchase-based data, advertisers can gauge campaign performance and optimize high-performing placements.
• Market Characteristics: There are significant variabilities in OOH pricing and inventory availability across markets nationwide. OOH inventory in larger markets (e.g., New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco) comes with a high price tag, while smaller markets offer advertisers a way to reach the same target audience without breaking the bank. Actionable insights into markets nationwide can be used to give advertisers data-driven recommendations to optimize and improve the cost-effectiveness of their campaigns. Robust Data on target geographies is now available through advanced OOH buying platforms with a simple search. In one click, advertisers can have information on a market’s population, average CPM (cost per thousand impressions), median price, and more at their fingertips. With information easily accessible across all markets and zip codes, advertisers can identify affordable lookalike markets — areas with characteristics similar to their target markets –– that broaden their reach and improve efficiency.
• Historical Pricing: This refers to fluctuations in pricing for the same OOH units over time. While OOH has always been a highly effective and ROI-positive marketing channel offered at a significantly lower cost than other mediums, costs plummeted at the height of the pandemic. OOH CPMs experienced an average decline of 24% and some public transit ad placements were discounted by as much as 60%, according to historical pricing data from an OOH buying platform. Through such platforms, advertisers have easy access to price index tools equipped with historical pricing data. This shows advertisers whether the price of each ad unit being considered is lower or higher than what it should be, ensuring great deals and fair pricing are received on every unit.
• Performance Metrics: The past can tell a great deal about the future. This rings especially true when it comes to OOH ad campaigns. Utilizing historical performance data, advertisers can make media buying decisions with confidence. Today, the effectiveness and performance of OOH campaigns can be measured in real-time and used to test, modify, and change-up creative during a campaign’s run. The data can also be used as a forecasting tool for advertisers when booking out future campaigns. With every campaign conversion tracked by advanced OOH buying platforms, advertisers can utilize this data to determine which OOH formats, ad units, audiences, and geographies are most likely to yield the highest performance.

It’s true that OOH advertising is the most cost-effective medium available, but that doesn’t mean brands can afford to be any less strategic. Fortunately, data shines light on every corner of an outdoor campaign. And by making data-driven decisions, advertisers can get the most out of their OOH campaigns and guarantee a maximum ROI in 2022 and beyond.

Matthew O’Connor is the CEO and cofounder of AdQuick.com, the first platform to allow brands, agencies and individuals to complete the entire process of planning, buying, executing and measuring out-of-home (OOH) advertising campaigns anywhere in the U.S. and around the globe.  

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