Marketers Agree: OOH Surprises and Delights Best

When asked which advertising channel performs best to surprise and delight audiences, a resounding 94% of marketers chose out-of-home. That’s pretty conclusive. Their answer may surprise some within the industry, though certainly not most since marketers report they are turning to OOH to woo consumers who are increasingly difficult to impress online.

The surprise and delight factor is just one of many insights revealed in a recent marketing survey that queried 611 marketing professionals in 45 U.S. states.

The majority of marketers also said they believe consumers are paying closer attention to their physical surroundings, now that they can spend more time out in the real world. The out-of-doors is feeling fresh and new to audiences who became bored (and, in many cases downright irritated) with their overwhelmingly digital existence during the pandemic. Especially online advertising.

A Medium for All Marketers

OOH’s popularity with consumers is especially great news for small and midsize brands. These companies have expressed increasing frustration about their inability to compete successfully against big-brand-big-budget advertisers for online visibility. They’re also concerned about diminishing returns and ROI due to pervasive digital fatigue.

And there is more good news. Since consumers connect OOH with surprise and delight, this opens the door for creative designers who may have been feeling as constrained as their audience, given the limitations of online advertising design.

OOH Unleashes Pent-Up Creativity

No other channel offers such a vast array of media options. Advertisers can pull together customized combinations to fit each campaign’s theme, goals and special circumstances such as conferences and events. You can be wildly imaginative with static visuals, digital, video and/or audio to display your brand’s personality as well as your advertising message.

OOH also offers seemingly unlimited placement options from roadsides and downtown streets to stadiums and digital screens in a multiplicity of indoor and outdoor settings. That includes airports, where you can catch your target audience coming, going and waiting. Waiting for their flight. Waiting for their bags. Waiting for their food or beverage in a restaurant or lounge.

With business and leisure travel on the rise, airports can provide vital meetups for brands and consumers.

With all that in mind, marketers are not only increasing their OOH budgets for 2002, they are considering more ways to incorporate both OOH and digital OOH inventory in their media mix. For example, our OneScreen.ai team recently worked with software company Reprise to create a commanding presence surrounding the B2BMX conference using multiple OOH media.

OOH Makes More Than One Kind of Impression

Marketers measure impressions as the number of people who had a chance to see their ad within a given timeframe. Brand familiarity builds credibility and trust, so it is vital to get as many eyes on your message — or at least your name – as possible. OOH can dramatically expand ad campaign reach and frequency, allowing marketers to make more impressions cost-effectively.

OOH also generates higher recall rates – 40% for OOH and 47% for DOOH – than either mobile (35%) or TV (22%).

In order to convert and sell, however, advertising must make a lasting impression – an emotional connection that moves consumers from brand-aware to engaged customer to buyer and long-term loyalist.

Ads that surprise and delight are memorable. Content that is relevant and compelling motivates action. In the same survey where marketers said OOH surprises and delights best, 84% of them said they expect OOH to become increasingly interactive in 2022. They are especially interested in expanding use of QR codes as well as augmented reality and recognition-enabled displays.

Interactive experiences are more memorable because they engage multiple senses. Researchers tell us that sensory experiences trigger a sense of emotional connection, and emotions trigger motivation to act. Exactly what every brand is looking for.

OOH has a singular ability to impress and win over consumers, B2C or B2B. No wonder marketers ranked out-of-home #2 among all advertising media for projected growth in 2022.

About OneScreen.ai

OneScreen.ai is accelerating the growth of real-world advertising by making it easier to buy and sell out-of-home (OOH) ads – from billboards, blimps, and buses to wrapped cars and connected TVs in bars and restaurants. OneScreen.ai is making the $100 billion OOH industry more streamlined and connected by providing one centralized space for marketers to buy, deploy, and measure OOH advertising and for media owners to sell, manage, and invoice their inventory. Founded by former executives and alumni from Google, HubSpot, and Wayfair, OneScreen.ai earned a Great Place to Work Certification in 2022.