Study reveals grand ambition for real-time DOOH among marketers
- 87% of UK marketing leaders believe real-time DOOH would enable more targeted advertising for their brands, with 72% planning to run a real-time DOOH advert in 2015
- Newly published report ‘Unlocking the value of real-time for OOH advertisers’ reveals challenges to activating real-time in DOOH at scale
12th January 2015, London – A survey commissioned by leading out-of-home (OOH) agency Posterscope .@Posterscope has revealed significant demand and audience potential for real-time digital out-of-home (DOOH) campaigns. The survey1 of more than 100 UK marketing leaders shows that 72 per cent will look to run a real-time2 DOOH campaign in 2015, whilst 87 per cent think it would enable more targeted advertising for their brands.
However, a recent Posterscope roundtable event with industry leaders – including 20th Century Fox, British Gas, Microsoft, Movember, Clear Channel, Ocean Outdoor, M&C Saatchi, Starcom MediaVest Group and Dentsu Aegis Network – revealed that although DOOH has strong capabilities to deliver real-time, the industry faces a variety of challenges in realising its potential.
These include difficulties in deploying real-time DOOH campaigns at scale and providing flexibility and agility for clients, agencies, creative teams and media owners. The roundtable also highlighted the importance of ensuring that real-time campaigns focus on reaching the right audience at the right time.
“Tapping into the right audience is key because people’s expectations are rising quickly and outpacing the rate of innovation in digital out-of-home”, said
Paul Grosvenor, senior marketing manager of Hive at British Gas. “They now expect connection through all devices, and their whole life to be synced.
If they see an ad that isn’t clever or doesn’t reflect something interesting and innovative we probably won’t connect with them in the way that making full use of this medium will. Ultimately we need to establish a partnership with the consumer, to let their interests and behaviour lead us into new and interesting areas and to use the technology we have at our fingertips to deliver something that not only meets their expectations, but exceeds them.”
Speaking at Posterscope’s roundtable Tara Powadiuk, global media partnerships lead at Microsoft, said: “The more you can orientate to target audiences and the customer’s journey, be it a parent’s journey to retail or a technically-savvy person’s journey to work, the better. I think customer journeys are the opportunity for the OOH industry that will draw in creative and media agencies to want to use OOH.”
A newly published report produced by Posterscope following the roundtable event, titled Unlocking the value of real-time for OOH advertisers, further highlights the conditions required for the OOH industry to take full advantage of real-time technologies. These include addressing issues of scalability, agility in planning and buying in real-time and the need to better articulate the opportunities for DOOH and real-time capabilities to clients, creative teams and agencies.
While digital represents 28 per cent of all spend in OOH, Posterscope estimates that less than five per cent of DOOH spend incorporates an element of real-time in digital OOH. However, this contrasts with a UK marketing landscape that is increasingly behaving in a digital way. The news that the UK is predicted to become the first country in the world where more than half of all advertising spend goes to digital media3 reflects this, and in 2015 47 per cent of UK digital display ad spend is predicted to be programmatic by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB)4.
Glen Wilson, managing director of Posterscope, said, “We estimate that in 2015 media owners will invest more than £75 million in digital infrastructure. This creates an almost infinite amount of possibilities to talk to people in the right place, but also at the precise time that you want to do so – and with real scale. However, this creates a huge amount of complexity because literally every second of that digital airtime is theoretically addressable.”
For more information on Posterscope, please contact:
Richard Bell – e: Richard.Bell@mcsaatchi.com, t: 020 7544 3758
Anastasia Alden – e: Anastasia.Alden@mcsaatchi.com, t: 020 3617 6528
1About the survey: Online survey of over 100 UK marketing leaders undertaken by Posterscope in November 2014
2Real-time refers to the ability to automatically change and update advertising using real-time data or content
3Source: The Guardian, UK set to be first country in which more than half of ad spend goes digital, by Mark Sweney, 01/12/14: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/dec/01/gadget-obsessed-uk-top-digital-advertising-spend
4Source: Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB): http://www.iabuk.net/about/press/archive/programmatic-accounts-for-28-of-uk-display-advertising#T5ATtD1Budk2jlbV.99
About Posterscope:
Posterscope is the world’s leading out-of-home communications agency. It knows more about how consumers behave when they are out of home than anyone else. Posterscope understands the connection between out-of-home, mobile and digital, and pioneers trials to understand how consumers will use emerging technologies.
Posterscope has 49 offices around the world, buying over $3bn of out-of-home advertising space each year.