Industry research uncovers new effectiveness indicators in Out of Home

New OOH Effectiveness Indicators: Insights from Industry Research

Joint industry research uncovers new effectiveness indicators in Out of Home and Digital Out of Home and extends confidence in an accountable medium

Out of Home is both a medium in growth and one that is embracing data and technology to make more informed, contextual and real time planning decisions. Coinciding with investment in quality sites in quality environments, we are seeing smarter contextual led ideas come to fruition across OOH, but the quest for more accurate measurement and accountability has never been stronger in OOH.

Route provides a robust foundation to measure true audience patterns and the reach metrics delivered across advertiser-friendly audiences gives a real edge to media plans in the age of personalisation, fragmentation and inflation.

Trusting in OOH to deliver reach and fame is also delivering effect. Our database of over 20 campaigns analysed in the past couple of years show a clear and consistent uplift in performance metrics, including calls to action, online traffic, sales, consideration and perception that we can begin to confidently project how OOH campaigns will deliver.

Adding a contextual element to your campaign using insight, data and a real-time application around location, behaviours and mindsets will enhance a campaign further, shifting behavioural change by over 40% and delivering a more personal and relevant communication that is an objective for most brands.

Such effects are confirmed when w look more closely at sales data; JCDecaux has revealed that digital proximity screens will deliver incremental sales to your OOH and even your TV campaign where motion, locational messaging, daypart or day of week planning and seasonal messaging is applied.

Because we are using a wider variety of data sources to inform smarter planning, we can have more confidence about OOH media and how it works.

To justify increased investment across classic and digital campaigns, Talon recently commissioned a major econometric study into effectiveness measures, conducted by BrandScience and supported and co-funded by seven media owners (JCDecaux, Clear Channel, Exterion Media, Primesight, Ocean Outdoor, Forrest Media and Outdoor Plus).

A detailed meta analysis of over 200 OOH ad campaigns demonstrates the medium’s value in delivering profitability and reveals how advertisers can increase return on investment in OOH, particularly through campaigns that effectively balance classic and digital OOH.

The analysis reveals that…

  • Increasing investment in OOH as part of the communications mix drives ROI for advertisers
  • Media channels consistently improve ROI when OOH is included in the mix
  • Use of digital OOH contributes favourably to ROI. The optimal proportion of digital OOH (as a total of the OOH budget) is around 45%; 20-25% of total inventory

We have used insights from the study to help recommend budget levels for all media channels. These will differ by category, where the nature of the consumer relationship with the brand plays a significant part. But we now have a set of directional recommendations – fully integrated with all media channels and across different budget levels – that can form the basis for a sharper discussion on getting the most out of OOH in the media plan.

The study demonstrates that we can clearly measure Out of Home effectively and that an increased Out of Home spend – in many cases – delivers higher ROI. The research is also a great example of the industry coming together to look objectively at how Out of Home works for brands. Not only have we a clearer idea of how it works, we know that digital Out of Home works hard in driving the right message in the right context to complement classic Out of Home messaging – the first real insight of its kind.

Combined with everything we are learning about people on the move and how advertising campaigns deliver call to action effectiveness measures, we are in a place where we can confidently apply a wider range of data inputs to reach people in a smarter way as standard.