Digital OOH is an emerging marketing channel with audiences that are both desirable and captive. Here's how to harness opportunities on "the fourth screen."
There's a burgeoning ad opportunity out there that's not too well known -- yet it's right under our noses. You see it every day, even if for just a few minutes at the grocery store or the gas station. Maybe you see it on your way to work or while picking up dinner, maybe at the mall, or on the elevator going to see the boss upstairs.
If you're advertising on digital out-of-home (digital OOH) media already, you're ahead of the curve. If you aren't, now's a good time to take a good, hard look.
Some industry players are referring to digital OOH as "the fourth screen," with television, computers and mobile representing the other three. Digital OOH encompasses everything from elevator news readers to digital billboards to gas station video panels. While the channel has yet to achieve the widespread acceptance of other media, it does represent a fast-growing advertising opportunity.
While newspaper, online and television advertising rates have been taking their hits, the digital OOH market has grown considerably. According to a PQ Media study from October 2008, this surging ad sector is on pace to grow 11.2 percent this year, and U.S. spending on digital OOH has tripled since 2002. While those numbers aren't as impressive as in 2007 -- when the market experienced an absurd 24.5 percent growth -- the digital OOH ad market is clearly a budding one that deserves a closer look from more agencies and brands.
A few advantages of digital OOH are clear. Digital OOH ads are, by definition, uninvited and unexpected. They invade a new audience space and are, therefore, surprising. In many digital OOH venues, such as in the gym or on an elevator, your advertising has a captive audience for a defined amount of time. These audiences are also often composed of highly desirable demographics. Since digital OOH is place-based, you also have plenty of other demographic data to use to target your advertising. And finally, digital OOH is also potentially the closest form of advertising to the point-of-purchase.
Regardless, digital OOH is still a new market -- and not one to be approached unprepared. Here are a few tips from current market leaders on how to successfully navigate these initially murky waters.
Understand the networks
Brands and agencies, beware: If you want to move into the digital OOH market, enter with your eyes open. The buying process behind the current digital OOH market is not quite what you've come to expect with online, print or any of the more mature advertising media.
"Right now, the whole buy-side of the digital signage space is fairly fragmented -- it's pretty Wild West," says Patrick Moorhead, director of emerging media at Razorfish. "The industry as a whole hasn't achieved the kind of scale yet that we're used to with other kinds of mediums."
Small networks have popped up across the country, each with particular focus -- such as elevators, bus stops, college campuses and coffee shops. Few of them have enough capital and manpower to truly integrate into larger, more complete networks. You won't find any DoubleClicks here.
"DOOH is still an emerging medium, so it's natural to see small local networks appear in the space," says Mike DiFranza, president and general manager of Captivate Network, a network that focuses on elevators. "If you look at other emerging mediums, like social media, you'll see that very same pattern."
He's right. Look at Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Twitter and others. You have dozens of different social networks, none of which are very compatible and all of which have their own advantages. So it is with digital OOH networks. The problem is that it takes a lot of work to fully understand the playing field, says Moorhead. "There's not a directory," he says. "There's not a consolidated buy-side platform."
Slowly, consolidation of networks will occur, as it has with other media. But until then, this segmentation creates a problem for new entrants into the market, and you shouldn't underestimate the amount of time it will take to get to know specific vendors and networks.