Mind the gap

by carly_mchugh | 5 December 2023 5:07 pm

On the station walls and platform edges of Toronto subways, riders are told to “mind the gap.”

The gap is the space between the boarding platform and the train, which can be quite dangerous. Once passengers are made aware of the gap, it is easy to step over, but those who do not pay proper attention might pay the price.

In the world of digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising, a similar gap exists between advertising creatives and media buyers. These two disciplines complement each other, but often operate independently.

Creative teams produce designs that inspire consumers to take action, yet they are often unaware of the full capabilities of the DOOH medium, resulting in a lack of true creative freedom. Alternatively, media buyers are extremely talented at knowing precisely how and where to reach an audience, but they often do not bring creative teams into the conversation until the end of the planning cycle, thereby sacrificing creativity in the name of speed. This gap in the DOOH world can result in lackluster creative executions and campaigns that fail to maximize their true potential.

However, hope for the future of the industry lies in exploring the knowledge gap between creative and media planning, what it means for brands, and how it can be closed by optimizing the creative, planning, and collaboration of teams to drive more effective DOOH campaigns.

The transformation of digital out-of-home

Out-of-home (OOH) is one of the oldest forms of advertising—dating back to ancient Egypt, where ads were written on stone tablets. Throughout the years, stone tablets evolved into billboards, wallscapes, and other more recognizable OOH formats we know today.

The early 2000s saw the rise of DOOH, and since then, there has been massive growth in the market. However, while the move from OOH to DOOH was an enormous leap forward for the outdoor advertising industry in general, the process of buying and selling DOOH campaigns remained unchanged. Buyers still had to make one-off deals with individual media owners, and media owners still had to work hard to sell their inventory.

The addition of programmatic technology brought the centuries-old OOH industry into the modern age of digital advertising. It has created a marketplace where media owners make their inventory available, and advertisers purchase those spots at auction. Today, an ever-growing percentage of DOOH media is bought and sold programmatically, which streamlines the process and vastly expands the audience reach for advertisers, as well as reduces the work media owners have to do to sell their supply.

Why creative is so critical

Creative executions are a cornerstone of effective advertising. Without a well-founded creative concept, a campaign will fall flat, no matter how much of the budget is thrown at it. However, history has shown the opposite is also true. Brands that invest in building high-quality creative are often rewarded with campaigns that drive recognition, build emotional connections between a brand and consumers, and create tremendous returns on investment (ROI).

A match made in advertising heaven

OOH media is known for pushing the boundaries of creativity with custom installations, memorable moments, and attention-grabbing campaigns. However, the reach and impact of traditional OOH ads can be stifled by the limited number of placements a media buying team can secure.

With hundreds of thousands of screens available globally, programmatic DOOH allows marketers to reach a wide audience with big, bold, and beautiful messaging, and engage consumers at multiple touchpoints throughout their daily lives.

If advertisers want to push the boundaries of creativity and experience unparalleled freedom of expression in their craft, DOOH should be front and centre in their media plans.

Unlocking DOOH’s true potential

As with any new technological advancement, a learning curve exists in DOOH, and it takes time to fully understand, retain, and apply new capabilities. Since some creative teams and buyers are not fully aware of all the medium’s unique characteristics, it is often forgotten or deprioritized during the planning stages of a campaign, forcing teams to retrofit existing creative for the specifications of DOOH screens. While this approach may work in some cases, marketers who do not plan around the unique features and benefits of DOOH will fail to fully activate a campaign’s true potential.

Leveraging audience data to achieve maximum impact

Every outstanding advertising campaign is built around the wants, needs, hopes, and dreams of a particular audience, and DOOH is no different. Marketers who want to build highly effective DOOH campaigns must incorporate creative elements that make the audience feel seen and encourage them to act.

In the digital advertising world, brands target audiences based on online behaviour—such as visiting a website, using a search engine, or adding an item to a digital shopping cart. DOOH allows marketers to seamlessly extend many of their existing digital targeting strategies into a physical ad medium, efficiently reaching their target consumers throughout their day.

Advertisers can build DOOH audiences based on behavioural patterns, as well as household, first-party, and third-party data.

Using data-driven creatives to drive extreme relevancy

One of the biggest technological advancements the DOOH industry has seen in recent years is the ability for advertisers to integrate data into their creative and targeting tactics.

Weather triggers

Advertisers have been tapping into weather’s influence on consumer behaviour for years, and now they can use weather triggers to extend this paradigm into their campaigns. When weather triggers are activated within a geographic area, a programmatic DOOH platform can automatically display weather-specific creative, allowing advertisers to deliver highly relevant ads based on local weather conditions which are more likely to resonate with their target audience. These triggers include air quality and pollen count; precipitation; temperature; humidity; cold and flu, pest, and insect seasons; and more.

Dynamic creative

Dynamic creative uses data to change specific elements within an individual advertising asset, to create tailored experiences for desired audiences. It can automatically swap out creative elements such as product images, taglines, ad copy, and offers. This gives advertisers the ability to drive personalization at scale and create highly engaging experiences based on real-time data inputs, such as the location of a store nearest to the ad display, countdowns, sports information, and more.

Campaign planning for DOOH success

Robust targeting capabilities and a wide variety of DOOH screen inventory open up an entirely new realm of possibilities for creative teams. However, without proper planning, well-crafted creative alone will struggle to move the needle on campaign goals. To truly succeed, marketers must take a thoughtful approach to how they plan and execute their DOOH campaigns.

Breaking down the silos

In the modern world of DOOH, the traditional workflow where creatives independently develop campaign assets, then pass them on to the media team for placement, simply does not work.

To prevent gaps from forming, creative and media buying teams need to re-evaluate their workflows to create a more collaborative and synergistic approach to planning and executing DOOH campaigns.

Connecting at the beginning, middle, and end of the campaign development process is key to ensuring there is a constant feedback loop for creatives to inquire about the target media, and for media planners to inquire about the creative executions. If creative and media teams are structured as linear assembly lines, the likelihood of missed opportunities increases.

Operational best practices

Rethinking the strategy behind agency, creative, and media workflows is not easy. Here are a few best practices to follow:

• Educate all teams involved in a buy: Make sure the creative team/agency is up to speed on the latest technology innovations in the channel. Consider periodic updates to keep creatives (and the entire team) abreast of new capabilities as they become available.
• Avoid defaulting to the same old media mix: The tools available within the channel are not the same as they were a few years ago, and a brand may be able to use DOOH in different ways than previously thought possible. Developing a culture of intellectual curiosity will help creatives and media planners not only work together, but also stay on top of what is current and what is new at the intersection of creative execution and media placement.
• Keep the feedback loop tight: The success of implementing DOOH best practices relies on open communication across teams. Remember to stay connected at every stage of the process.
• Pre-campaign: Ensure all stakeholders understand what is feasible for the creative and media buying teams based on bandwidth and budget, and set goals and expectations accordingly.
• Post-campaign: Bring both teams together to understand what worked for a specific campaign and what could be improved for next time. Did the audience targeting strategy work? How did different creative versions perform?

Closing the DOOH gap

As brands look to capture consumer attention in an ever-more competitive landscape, DOOH provides the perfect canvas for advertisers to reach their audiences with high-impact creative at multiple touchpoints throughout the buyer’s journey. However, the gap between media planning and creative teams remains a sticking point which keeps many DOOH campaigns from becoming truly great.

For brands standing on the metaphorical train platform, ready to take the leap into the next phase of their marketing journeys, achieving total alignment from both the creative and media planning teams will go a long way in closing the DOOH gap.

Once creative teams have full knowledge of the capabilities, requirements, and considerations of DOOH, they will be empowered to produce stunning designs that deeply resonate with consumers. Similarly, when media buyers recognize the importance of bringing creative teams into the conversation early and keeping open communication throughout the planning process, their collaboration will unlock new heights of creative freedom and build more engaging, inspiring, and effective DOOH campaigns.   

This article is based on a white paper from programmatic and software solutions provider Vistar Media. For more information, visit www.vistarmedia.com.

Source URL: https://www.signmedia.ca/mind-the-gap/

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