Imagine driving down a highway where billboards dramatically display ads targeted at you as you pass them by. Imagine billboard spaces sold in real-time auctions and displayed across the city in a matter of minutes. Imagine looking up at messages that change dynamically depending on the time of day or weather condition.
If brands and advertisers are to be believed, we are driving towards a reality where machines will be programmed to buy ads, where smart billboards will recognise the passerby and pitch products and services she is interested in.
OOH has long been seen as a specialised platform that is difficult to execute and has little utility. Thanks to technology, static out-of-home advertisements are being rapidly replaced by digital displays. According to the EY FICCI M&E report 2022, digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising comprises over 6% of the OOH segment’s revenues, up from just 2% in 2019. The report also predicts that the share of DOOH revenues will reach 15% by 2024. Armed with tools that help advertisers to accurately measure audience impressions, DOOH spends have moved up from Rs 50 crore to Rs 300 crore in 2021, as per last year’s Pitch Madison Adex Report.
But just going digital won’t be enough; OOH ads require a certain level of creativity to grab attention – one factor that has reduced the effectiveness of online display ads over time. Brands are doing what it takes. Consider Bata India, which recently launched a 3D OOH billboard to showcase its sneakers range, while using an anamorphic image content creation format, making the product appear in three dimensions. A few months ago, HP executed a programmatic DOOH campaign for its new Spectre 360 laptop range, which allowed the brand to identify peak traffic timings at the screens’ location and focus its activity during specific hours. Car makers like Hyundai and Renault India have also jumped onto the bandwagon with hyper-realistic cars speeding out of billboard screens. OTT brands Netflix, Prime Video and Hotstar have used activations on India’s first floating LED outdoor display anchored at the Bandra-Worli Sea Link in Mumbai.
In other words, the offline advertising industry is slowly but steadily catching up with technological innovation, introducing tools like geofencing and beacons to offer tracking and personalisation. From programmatic targeting to 3D and audio, brands are experimenting with new formats at never before locations. The reason for the transition is obvious. DOOH offers brands all the advantages of online display advertising, such as targeting and enhanced traffic data, while being resistant to ad blockers.
Being smart
Following the slowdown of the pandemic months, most marketers are focused on getting results. Mohanraj J, CEO, Duroflex, says when programmatic DOOH was introduced in 2020, there were reservations about adapting web and mobile creatives into DOOH. But today, the creative is the main topic of many conversations and plans. “It is possible to achieve KPIs in a variety of ways — by engaging offline audiences with billboards to start a purchase path using a QR code or by showing a series of messages during their trip home on a highway to a personalised message on their connected TV or audio podcast,” he adds.
That said, DOOH adoption in India still lags counties like Singapore, where 60% of all OOH is digital. In India the figure stands at 14%. The global average is 40%. Experts note that the format is fairly expensive and involves some execution-level hurdles. “We have unique weather conditions across the country which makes it difficult and expensive to run these ads, making them out of reach for quite a few brands,” says Alin Choubey, business head (north), FoxyMoron.
“Not all digital screens have the combined offering of cameras and sensors to precisely map the ad’s physical reach,” adds Rajni Daswani, director, digital marketing, SoCheers. “Though a majority of OOH boards have converted to DOOH in Mumbai, in tier-I and II cities these screens are located at select locations. They have an installation cost that dissuades many advertisers from leveraging them.”
Another challenge that DOOH faces is the difficulty in calculating conversions, considering that the objective of outdoor is to drive awareness of and engagement with a brand. Daswani says DOOH is usually a part of a larger marketing mix, and therefore attributing the overall campaign conversion to just one channel is wrong. The good news is, as technology advances, more options for targeting and measuring the effectiveness of these campaigns will become available to many, say industry insiders.