Talon’s Media Mixer Week

In the past, OOH specialists have had a very specific responsibility, to create and evaluate OOH plans. But our World is changing. The increase in a digital infrastructure, the prevalence of data and the opportunity for cross channel collaboration means that it’s time for us to stick our head up above the parapet and take a good look around. 

Talon’s Media Mixer Week: Navigating Cross-Channel Evolution

Enter Talon’s Media Mixer Week, five days dedicated to understanding other media channels and how tech, data and measurement have been driving factors behind their evolution.

Reach PLC’s Andrew Tenzer kicked off the week, discussing his findings in The Empathy Delusion, that hyper targeting and personification ignores the fact that people feel good when others make the same choices as them. However, in our media bubble, the holistic thinking of consumers is often ignored as we assume ‘people’s product choices are motivated by a need to stand out and signal their unique personality and identity’. Thereby, questioning why, as marketing professionals, we are becoming more obsessed with hyper personalisation.

The Empathy Delusion also describes the consumer’s ability to unconsciously pay attention to social context, something we know is incredibly effective in our channel. OOH is, and will always be, a one-to-many media, however contextualising messages has significantly positive effects. Talon’s benchmarks show that contextual campaigns drive an average increase of 56% in consideration as well as drive spontaneous ad awareness and purchase behaviour. To work effectively cohesive planning and integration between media agencies, creatives and specialist teams is imperative to ensure we’re not being deluded by our own sense of empathy.

Tuesday saw OnDevice answer the question of ‘what is the point of measurement’. As clients have become accustomed, dare I say addicted, to the omnipresent reporting of online, other channels need to adopt measurement as a mandatory, not a nice to have.

OnDevice have developed a passive methodology to measure OOH in a consistent and accurate way, proving both brand shift effectiveness and behaviour change as a result of seeing a campaign. Historically, OOH measurement methodologies have been grounded in claimed behaviour but the advent of location history data now allows us to be much more confident about exposure. As a partner of Talon’s, we look forward to exploring cutting edge measurement techniques and campaign effectiveness with them into 2020.

Ollie Deane, Global’s director of commercial digital, joined us on Wednesday to discuss how Global have shaped the audio market with DAX, their Digital Audio Exchange platform. Particularly relevant since Global acquired three outdoor businesses last year. Spotting a gap in the market back in 2013, they saw an opportunity to help increase ad spend in digital audio. Now reaching 53% of the population weekly, 66% of brand advertisers say that they now see digital audio as a key part of their integrated media strategies.

As OOH’s ability to target more behavioural audiences grow, there are learnings we can take from DAX’s approach; develop technology which fits the channel, seek out valuable audiences and never apply a reporting technique that isn’t right for the channel.

On Thursday Sky Adsmart echoed the learnings from DAX. In an ever changing TV market, Sky spotted an opportunity that would see their product offer a brand new way of planning and buying TV. Sky’s addressable TV proposition allows advertisers to buy targeted TV campaigns underpinned by using a range of data suppliers including Experian and TwentyCI, allows for bespoke targeting that reduces wastage. This approach and the relevancy of a targeted approach has led to an astounding 35% increase in ad engagement and 10% increase in ad enjoyment.

Creating targeted campaigns based on data such as postcodes and observed behaviour is not new to OOH. Through Talon’s proprietary data management platform Ada, 1st, 2nd and 3rd party data can be deployed to understand where behavioural audiences live, where they work and how and where they travel. These data sources can be consistently activated across channels to bring one audience targeting proposition to life.

To round up the week, ITV helped us to understand the changing TV market in more detail. The rise of Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) and time-shifted viewing has put pressure on the classic broadcast nature of TV. Changing viewing habits has made it more difficult to reach particular audiences like 16-34’s but Talon’s recent article highlights the way we can use OOH to bridge to gap for these audiences who are harder to reach.

Broadcaster Video on Demand (BVOD) is TV’s own answer to this. ITV Hub prides itself on ‘high quality content with precise targeting and shorter adbreaks’. The precise targeting combined with high quality data sources such as, Experian and LiveRamp, help to ascertain audience type and serve the right adverts to the right people.

Over the entire Media Mixer Week, it was clear that the possibilities for cross channel integration are growing. As other media channels are increasingly able to deploy more sophisticated targeting techniques and better understand the effect this has on their audiences, we in OOH look forward to working with them to produce more effective campaigns for our clients.