How OOH Can Benefit Your Media Mix

Advertisements are everywhere—plastered to neighborhood lamp posts, positioned between the advice column and the op-eds of your favorite magazine, fixed on the wall of the nearby bus stop. While some market beauty products and others legal services, they all have one thing in common—they’re each vying for consumers’ attention. 

As an advertiser, a mixed-media marketing approach can cover all the bases to improve your reach and attract potential customers to your offerings on a large scale. Digital and online media can be curated to your target audience to attract and retain consumers. But how can you attract potential customers on a larger scale?

That’s where OOH marketing comes in. Out of home advertisements like posters and billboards continue to grow in revenue and relevance. And new technologies are now allowing campaign managers to measure audience analytics and optimize marketing in real-time. Let’s dive into how your campaign can benefit from a mixed-media OOH approach.

What is OOH Advertising?

Before explaining why your media mix needs to expand its OOH advertising, we need to define what OOH entails. Essentially, out of home advertising consists of any ad you see when you leave your home, including:

• Billboards
• Posters
• Bus ads
• Taxi ads
• Park bench ads

While OOH advertising is a long-established form of advertising, it’s nuanced in that it reaches more eyeballs than other traditional forms of advertising, like television, radio, and newspaper ads. In fact, with $6.5 million worth of advertising space (the cost of one Super Bowl ad), an OOH bulletin can earn over one billion impressions and attract 84% of passersbys.¹ 

Compared to a one-time ad shared with a niche market, like a Super Bowl commercial, OOH makes a splash across a diverse audience for a longer period of time. Additionally, studies found that digital OOH programmatic advertising, which can be curated based on nearby consumers or time of day, had increased engagement:

• 77% of adults in cities with more than one million in population recently engaged with an OOH ad

• 64% of adults in cities with more than one million in population are noticing ads more in recent years

It has the highest recall, too, compared to other advertising methods like television, desktop, mobile, radio, and print ads. Now, let’s explore the additional benefits of incorporating OOH into your media mix. 

Benefits of Incorporating OOH Advertising

While OOH is an effective tool on its own, incorporating it into your media mix can amplify your marketing efforts in three distinct ways.

#1 OOH Connects You with New Audiences

Depending on your placement, your OOH ad will most likely reach a large and diverse audience. While you may think that digital ads have the largest audience, studies show that’s not entirely true. OOH has a broad impact:²

• OOH reaches 91% of people living in the USA who are older than 16
• Out of this group, 80% of people consciously notice the ad
• 82% of that group also pay attention to and engage with the ad

Compared to digital ads that people can quickly click away from or use ad blockers to avoid entirely, OOH’s reach and engagement are hard to find elsewhere. Additionally, if they’re positioned along a major highway or commerce center, your ad will be seen by thousands—potentially more than once.  

In addition to connecting your brand with a larger audience, OOH ads now have the capabilities to engage with your audience, too. Technologies like QR codes, which can be printed on OOH ads, allow consumers to easily access your product or service. You can even direct the code to your social media page for a multi-channel focus. 

And OOH ads can be digital, too, meaning consumers can interact with advertisements on the street and you can rotate more than one ad during the duration of your campaign. 

Location-based technology like geofencing also allows you to interact with nearby consumers on their personal devices. Just create a virtual perimeter around your OOH ad to attract consumers to your QR code or even to your nearby outpost. 

#2 OOH Can Target Specific Groups

A previous drawback of OOH advertising was that you didn’t know who you were reaching with it. While large audiences are always appreciated, some companies find their advertising campaigns are more effective when targeting customers who might already be interested in their product.

For that reason, using a billboard in a crowded area can be less effective. Luckily, recent updates in OOH now let companies place ads in spots where they’ll be more able to reach their intended target audiences. This change came about due to advancements in:

• Locational intelligence like geofencing
• Demographic data and mapping technologies

With these new technologies, brands can better understand their audience and track engagements in real-time to help optimize their campaign. 

These technologies also tell campaign managers where their target consumers are more likely to go. They can then effectively deploy OOH to these spots and create the impact they’re looking for.

#3 People Prefer OOH to Other Forms of Advertising

Not only does OOH have excellent reach and targeting abilities, but it also has a better perception among consumers than other forms of advertising. While people tend to find themselves annoyed or suspicious of ads they see on their computers or phones, they feel less negatively towards those they encounter outside.

This enthusiasm is seen clearly in the way OOH drives engagement compared to other ads. One study from Nielsen shows that:³

• Companies see 4x more online engagement for every dollar with OOH than TV or print
• Almost half the adults who see OOH go online to look up the product
• Close to 40% have gone on Facebook to follow up on products after seeing an OOH ad

OOH’s less intrusive nature helps to spark a connection with the consumers who view it and encourages them to follow up on what they see. This level of engagement makes it something your media mix can’t afford to miss out on.

Elevate Your Marketing Mix with True Impact Media

An effective OOH advertising strategy can connect you with a diverse audience, help you engage with potential customers, and gain customer loyalty on a large scale. 

If you want to take your marketing mix to the next level by adding outdoor advertising, True Impact Media is here to help. 

We can help you find and manage an OOH location to ensure all eyes are on you and your offerings. Our easy-to-use platform puts you in the driver’s seat by providing you with the information your campaign needs to succeed. We offer interactive maps and several analytics tools to make an impact and optimize as you go. 

Throw True Impact Media into the mix for a powerful and flexible campaign you can’t miss. 

Sources: 

1. OAAA. Sales Tip: OOH Reaches Ten Times the Audience for the Cost of a Super Bowl Ad. https://specialreports.oaaa.org/sales-tip-ooh-reaches-ten-times-the-audience-for-the-cost-of-a-super-bowl-ad/ 
2. Nielsen. Out-of-Home Advertising Study. https://oaaa.org/Portals/0/pdf/research/Nielsen%20OAAA%20OOH%20Advertising%20Study%202016%20FINAL.pdf
3. OAAA. Nielsen: OOH Most Effective in Driving Online Activity. https://specialreports.oaaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Nielsen_042417.pdf