2. Some main ingredients
Increasing audiences
OOH connectivity
Sophisticated devices
Networked OOH
Consumer adoption & receptivity
3. Six future defining themes
Integrated Gateways to
Real-time
MOOH content &
content
planning transaction
Real-time Value Utility
optimisation through through
& trading data technology
13. Six future defining themes
Integrated Gateways to
Real-time
MOOH content &
content
planning transaction
Real-time Value Utility
optimisation through through
& trading data technology
Although Posterscope is an agency I’m really here to represent the OOH medium.The reason for having this focus today is that arguably we’ve seen more positive change in OOH than any other medium aside from online.
Some of the drivers of this change includeThe increasing amounts of time that people spend OOHAnd the increased connectivity that 3G, 4G and wi-fi is giving them when they are out and aboutThis is matched by the proliferation of devices such as smartphones, tablet and laptops. In fact smartphone penetration is currently at 46-53%The OOH medium itself is becoming similarly connected. There are over 3m internet driven OOH screens globally & 210,000 in UK.Most importantly consumers like all of this change and are quickly becoming comfortable with things like making purchases via their mobiles.
This gives us 6 themes that will increasingly shape how advertisers, agencies and media owners approach OOH.I’ll very briefly explain each.
I think we’ll see mobile and OOH planned in a much more integrated way and I don’t just mean in terms of interactive technologies.As we all build our understanding and data about how, when and where people are using their mobiles to search, visit websites, use apps etc brands can use this to plan exactly where and when their OOH media should run to influence that behaviour. For example using data about where & when particular mobile searches occur to plan posters/screens at those locations/times which in turn drive more mobile searches.In some cases where online price comparison affects real world sales, one of the roles for posters might even be to discourage mobile usage
That’s not to say that interactive technologies aren’t important and there are numerous ways of using OOH media to connect people straight to mobile content. NFC in particular, which you can see here, will create a step change in this area and allows people with an NFC enabled phone to touch their phone against a small tag embedded inside a sticker on a poster to instruct their phone to take an action e.g. opening an app or website. NFC is being backed by most of the major telecoms players including google and is what will enable your phone to become your mobile wallet and your oyster card.So the concept of buying products straight from a poster site could become quite mainstream quite quickly.
Screens account for 13% of UK OOH adspend but still very few campaigns really take advantage of their connected nature and I think that will change so that we see much more live data and information featuring within DOOH content so that screens are treated more like websites.
So as an extension of this if you can serve ads in real time and combine this with real time effectiveness measures you’ve essentially got some of the same ingredients as an online demand side platform but instead of banners, impressions and clicks you might have screens, eye-tracking cameras and electronic sales data allowing real time creative and scheduling optimisation and trading.
As you are starting to see real time data is becoming as important to the OOH industry as it is to other agencies and media owners.There are all manner of data sources that would be useful in the planning of OOH, especially when this is fused with other data sources.
My final theme for the future is public utility based advertising which of course is nothing new but the opportunities that can created through technology are only just starting to be exploited. With Credit Suisse we branded the free wi-fi service at London City airport to help build positive consumer perceptions & drive web traffic.
For Yell.com we allowed people to browse local business directories on the street, complete with constantly updated consumer reviews from the web. Vast amounts of other useful OOH related content and data available via the web and lots of this is open source as well – things like boris bike availability or real time bus locations and there are so many instances where brands could install technology to make peoples lives easier or more fun which I think will become more prevalent especially as the cost of technology comes down.
All of the themes that I’ve just talked though have the potential to have new biz models associated with them so hopefully this gives us a bit of stimulus for today’s discussion.