• by Dan Levi , Op-Ed Contributor, January 14, 2019

The ability of advertisers to reach consumers in specific geographic locations has always been a unique out-of-home (OOH) advertising strength. A focus on location and contextual relevance is a big reason why OOH provides value to advertisers and consumer —  and always will.

However, as the advertising business has changed, so has OOH. Today, data sets provide opportunities to leverage new tools, insights and planning approaches to reinforce the value of OOH as a medium with a distinct focus on the power of audiences in locations.

Our Mobile-led Society

Consumers’ embrace of mobile technology and smartphones as their “screen of choice” has put renewed focus on the importance of location. But in a mobile-led society, “location” is not just about understanding where people are; it’s also about understanding why they’re in these locations, where they were before, where they go after, and why.

OOH is focused on understanding the consumer journey and behaviors in both the physical and digital worlds.

The OOH industry has embraced the application of mobile data to best illustrate consumer behavior and mobility in the physical world. In doing so, OOH media companies can help advertisers measure campaign impact against specific audience segments.

Uses-Cases for OOH Data

OOH is fundamentally a one-to-many medium. By leveraging data, OOH can facilitate “mass personalization” and increase the likelihood the right advertiser messages are delivered to the right audience segments.

The OOH industry’s digital transformation relies on the use of a data-driven approaches that make OOH a more targeted and contextualized experience.

There are four key use-cases for OOH data:

1. Measurement
   At a basic level, measurement provides a common currency for evaluation of the medium. Measurement provides marketers a view into the number and types of people reached by an OOH location or campaign. Recent technology advancements enhance the efficiency and accuracy of measurement, allowing the OOH industry to move away from manual counting approaches to an automated approach that leverages mobile location and movement data.

2. Targeting
   Data is helping marketers identify where target audiences live, work and how they move about their days, which allows brands to reach them at a larger scale with greater accuracy and in a privacy-friendly manner. OOH media companies use data from a variety of data sources to help marketers better understand the value of specific OOH inventory. Identifying audiences can be achieved through a range of media planning tools that leverage data to help marketers identify which displays or screens have the highest propensity to reach specific target audiences.

3. Dynamic Creative
   Data can be used to enhance the creative content displayed on a screen, helping to contextualize the experience and provide more dynamic and engaging ads. Using easily accessible data sources, like weather reports or language translators, marketers can customize content. Studies have shown contextualizing advertising content stimulates higher ad recall and positive brand association.

4. Attribution or Campaign Effectiveness
   Technology advancements and mobile-based solutions are key drivers for how data is leveraged when measuring the efficacy of OOH. Solutions may be panel-based (using specific apps to drive panel interaction) or based on broader-reaching mobile data sets. Response to dynamic content running on screens can also be evaluated to understand if a campaign met a marketer’s key performance indicators (KPI’s).

The importance of data in measurement, targeting, creative and attribution for advertising isn’t new. What is new is how technology advancements and capabilities from the digital data world are helping drive efficiency, improved accuracy, and scale in OOH, helping bring mass-personalization to a traditional medium that continues to innovate and thrive in our mobile-first era.

The OAAA Innovations Committee has developed an industry white paper to assist in Understanding OOH Data and Its Uses. The paper also addresses privacy issues, integrating OOH data into today’s omnichannel world and provides helpful questions to ask when considering location-based media.