The future of Out Of Home advertising: DOOH or nothing
What’s the first association that pops up when you think of what our urban life will have become between this and 20 years from now? Overly connected? Zero-privacy? Overflown with people? Creative mobility? Submerged by pollution? Eco-friendly? Whatever your view on the matter may be, we cannot avoid the inevitable: our cities will have to become smarter. More sustainable, more connected, more creative means of transportation and more focused on responsible long-term economic investments. The smart city of tomorrow puts its inhabitants first and is able to anticipate their current and future needs. This requires not only the capacity to collect and make good use of these rich insights, it also inherently urges the integration of different intelligent means of communication and technology. What’s the end goal? A booming, economically healthy city center that’s attractive AND practical to live in (read: green and futureproof, fluid transportation, more competitive and cost effective thanks to smart and innovating processes). This may sound like Utopia, but it’s already a reality for some of the leading capital cities throughout the world such as New York. The metropolis stays true to its “time-is-money” attitude by introducing the pioneering “Link NYC” project: a first-of-its-kind communications network that will replace over 7.500 pay phones by so-called “Links”. These public booths promise to provide the fast-paced New Yorker with hassle-free Wi-Fi, phone calls, device charging and tablet use, accessing easily to city services, maps and directions. The beauty of it all: it’s totally free of charge because the whole concept is funded by advertising. Our beloved Brussels is eagerly following in NYC’s footsteps with the installation of 100 display screens throughout the city center and new smart mobility projects planned to finalize in 2020. All examples of initiatives aiming to improve connectivity amongst citizens and enhance public information sharing, making smart cities the ideal platforms to spread messages. See it as a huge urban mass media potential.
Love it or loathe it, screens will undoubtedly become omnipresent. Not only in our public but also in our private lives, taking all types of forms and sizes — for all kinds of usage. Imagine an intelligent fridge that sends you an alert when you’re almost out of bacon-and-eggs and automatically orders your groceries online when you’re running out. No more calendar reminders, no more last-minute Deliveroo panic orders and no more quarreling with your partner because he or she forgot to buy appetizers for your dinner party. Great expectations, great ambitions: there’s only one crucial ingredient to fuel this urban digital revolution. Data. Big data.
In order to make the city a more practical and agile place to live in, we’d need to fully focus on developing its services. Today open data is already available to the public, making it easy to collect information in terms of mobility, health, environment and demographics. The quicker and smarter a city leverages the rich data it possesses, the more it will be able to innovate. Here is where our Digital Out Of Home (DOOH) steps in. You can ask yourself what good use digital outdoor screens may have when it comes to transforming our cities. Easy: it revolutionizes the way cities will interact with its people. And thus in the end, the way brands will interact with its (future) consumers and vice versa. It gives new meaning to two-way communication by offering different services to the exposed and allowing interactivity with the consumer.
The smart use of data creates the opportunity to bring adjusted, fully contextualized messages to the right people at the right time at the right place, therefore bringing relevance into the picture. For brands, DOOH will play a powerful role in the constantly changing consumer journey because of its strong influence during the active consideration and evaluation phase. A study conducted by Liveposter and Posterscope (Source: “The dynamic difference” — 2016), observed a staggering uplift of 53% when it comes to message recall when comparing the impact of dynamic versus classic static posters. Thanks to its striking appearance, interactivity, personalized & contextualized approach and nowness, it has an enormous potential to influence the decisions of consumers on their way to buying a product. Because of its outdoor placement, DOOH bridges the gap between an online and physical store, serving as the perfect touchpoint to help drive traffic to the bricks-and-mortars. Research shows a +9% purchase intent increase fully attributed to DOOH versus regular OOH print advertising (Source: Liveposter — Posterscope “The dynamic difference” — 2016). This new focus on brand commerce closes the gap between brand experience and purchase, making these intelligent screens an ideal touchpoint to influence consumer decisions.
On an International level, many creative brands have already understood how to fully take advantage of the added value of Digital Out Of Home advertising. They have shifted from the traditional one-way communication characterized by push marketing by focusing on the needs of the consumer instead. Advertising becomes meaningful when it offers a clear benefit and service in the eye of the beholder. The power of this type of communication is that it allows to connect and interact with a wide range of people at the same time. Think of personalized love messages at scale, live harvesting of fruit one day before it’s available in store, instant flight details of the plane taking off right above your head, runway trends for the upcoming new fashion season being diffused real-time during fashion show events. These examples all show the importance of real-time data driven narratives and contextualization made possible through automatic -potentially in the nearby future- programmatic buying. Marketers can imagine displaying creatives that are adjusted to numerous contexts. Copies can be adapted to trending social media topics, news events, time of day, traffic situations, consumer and store data, and location — which would make it possible for a local grocery store to diffuse promotional dynamic ads in his neighborhood to help drive traffic in store during slow sales periods.
Digital innovations such as artificial intelligence have made it possible to detect the way the person standing in front of the ad is feeling whereas technological features such as sensors predict what the weather is going to be like today and if you should be putting on sunblock, paving new ways to the ultimate user experience. Future improvements will soon make it possible to display in real-time how many iPhone 8 mobiles are still in stock during the launch day in store, helping you decide whether it’s worth the trouble arriving late at work or not.
It’s safe to say that when it comes to local DOOH, we have only just begun to exploit the numerous opportunities lying ahead. Neighboring countries such as the UK have proven to be one step ahead of the game when it comes to finding ways to connect the available data with emerging technologies. Whatever our advancement in the process may be, one thing remains indisputable: screens, cutting-edge techs and big data will be at the core of the digital transformation of our cities. Brace yourselves: the future is just waiting at your doorstep.