Implications for Digital Out-of-Home Media (In-Store)
Digital out-of-home (DOOH) owned media includes any digital signage that runs ads or content that provides viewers with information and entertainment in a public space. It varies from small screens in retail outlets to large outdoor billboards, and anything else in the middle. They can also appear in doctor offices, on airplanes, restaurants, and at many more places. Most of the DOOH owned media is driven by retailers and entrepreneurs seeking to extend their business by reaching highly defined audiences. Attempting to encourage consumers to purchase a product, DOOH may offer insightful videos about how to use a product, a discount or promotion, or it may contain an interactive component to engage passers-by in learning more about a product and/or service.
DOOH is a fast growing and widely successful medium. It is an advertiser’s dream medium because of several advantages known as the 4 C’s:
- Coverage - A powerful co
mbination of reach and precise targeting by geography, venue type, and more. With many venues having stores located across the United States, this provides advertisers with a chance to create DOOH campaigns specifically tailored to a certain region, state, or city. Additionally, within those locations they also have the ability to place the DOOH piece in a section or department of a venue that is most relevant to campaign, where it is more likely to reach its target audience. - Control - Assets are centrally controlled and managed, allowing for rapid optimization. Easy access and the ability to remotely change the content of DOOH campaigns reduces the number of advertising channels they have to go through if they want to tweak something that appears on the screen.
- Cost effectiveness – CPM continues to be competitive when compared to online, television, and traditional OOH. Moreover, with the cost of LCD and other screens drastically decreasing, advertisers can afford higher quality displays.
- Customer satisfaction – Unlike many advertising channels, consumers typically find DOOH useful. Being bombarded with ads via various media channels, consumers are numb to the effects of advertising and thus tend to tune them out. DOOH delivers relevant content to the right people at the right time.
One of the end results of advertising efforts is to see an increase in ROI. With a plethora of ways to reach consumers, advertisers are demanding more accountability from the various methods used. DOOH is a new and innovative way to reach consumers and is very successful in engaging them with the on-screen content. Similar to other platforms such as social media, no one really knows exactly how to measure its impact and conversions as a result of engagement. Currently, there are no existing KPIs or other success metrics to serve as a foundation when evaluating the effectiveness of this medium. The lack of quantifiable results is the biggest challenge facing DOOH. Subsequently, advertisers are hesitant to use DOOH in their media plans. Also influencing their decision is the lack of awareness and full understanding of the channel’s benefits. Some proposed audience measurements include: total venue audience, possible viewing audience, actual audience, average viewing audience dwell time, and content loop length. However, the main problems will be how to interpret and translate these numbers into insights, how to determine what will be classified as a successful DOOH campaign, and how to track conversions and related sales. DOOH has a promising future in the advertising realm. It is expected that once advertisers acquire more knowledge about it, more precise success metrics will be defined and used when initiating DOOH campaigns.
Considering the growth of DOOH and its increasing relevance to and knowledge about consumers, privacy issues are bound to become a problem. Although companies claim the consumers’ information is not stored in a database, doubt and speculation could rise leading to lawsuits related to privacy issues; similar to what Google faced earlier this year when they initiated the integration of personalized search information with a user’s personal Google+ profile page. Rising sensitivity to personal data is already a growing concern. DOOH is entering a fragile environment in how it gathers and manages the information from consumers.
DOOH, particularly owned media, has fastly become the star in media. It has gotten on advertisers’ good side by providing a precise and effective way to communicate with consumers. Inversely, its un-trackable nature has also been the cause of many headaches in the media planning world. However, there is no doubt that this medium will continue to rise and improve with technology and science on its side. This success may come at the expense of consumers’ privacy; undoubtedly, ethical issues will arise. In conclusion, DOOH owned media is changing the way people run businesses and the way consumers react to messages.
