Every Question You Have On Out Of Home Advertising

14 December, 2019

Out Of Home is the most common and yet the most outstanding method of advertising a brand can lean on. It is the medium that even the greatest tech giants like Google look up to when they need to grab the attention of the masses. And you need to know about OOH if you want your advertisements to get noticed as well.

What is OOH?

According to Wikipedia, Out-of-home (OOH) advertising or outdoor advertising, also known as out-of-home media or outdoor media, is advertising that reaches consumers while they are outside their homes.

OOH includes any and all forms of advertisements that can be located outdoors. The most common form of outdoor advertising has been billboards, so far. But growth is taking place at a rapid rate developing new formats of OOH which are equally, if not more, creative and effective. Nowadays, OOH can range anywhere from beautiful and colorful billboards to massive forms of advertisements pasted on vehicles that contain QR codes to lead the consumer directly to your business’ website.

What’s Considered as OOH?

OOH is arguably the most creative media of advertising. Advertising is successful when it is innovative and relatable at the same time. Outdoor advertisements don’t only let you express your imagination in a super creative way but also help your audience have a look at your vision.

Categorizing OOH can be difficult as sparingly anything can become a medium for it. Outdoor Advertising Association of America loosely divided outdoor advertising into four categories -

  • Billboards - from traditional hoardings to moving billboards.
  • Transit Advertisements - interior cards in public transits, advertisements painted on buses, stickers pasted on cars, etc.
  • Street Furniture - advertisements pasted or painted on bus shelters, benches, kiosks, etc.
  • Cinema Advertisements - commercials that appear before a movie starts and other ads around the theatre.

There are some other media that don’t fall into any of these categories but still can be considered as outdoor advertisements, an example is the Guerilla Campaign.

These days, the integration of digital marketing into outdoor advertising is being more and more implemented. It makes OOH more fun and interactive for the audience like the Bijoyer Golpo campaign is doing for RFL Group. As technology is making everything more convenient for us, the use of QR codes, bar codes or even the mention of your website address on the outdoor advertisement can direct consumers to your business very conveniently. These are the reasons for the rapid rise in digital outdoor advertisements. According to PricewaterhouseCooper’s estimate, by 2020, 46% of total OOH will account for digitally incorporated outdoor advertising.

How Does One Measure The Impacts?

OOH has been popular among advertisers for such a long time because it works. But often we need stats and analytics to truly believe in the impacts of the method. It’s, in general, assumed that outdoor advertising is not measurable. This assumption is not entirely correct as there are a few methods of measuring the tremendous impacts your outdoor advertisement is making.

There are three location-based parameters that you might need to consider while choosing a site for your advert as well as measuring the impacts it might provide. They are Daily Effective Circulation (DEC) of vehicles and pedestrians, Opportunity to Contact (OTC) representing the people who move past and see your advertisement and Visually Adjusted Contact (VAC) counting the number of people who saw the advert during your campaign. [Ref]

OTC and DEC can be known by using various methods such as Government surveys, road traffic counts, GPS tracking devices carried by survey participants, census data, etc. And the impact of this traffic on your campaign can easily be assumed from the sales growth during the ongoing campaign. If you are investing in only an outdoor campaign, for the time being, the before and after sales of your company will give you a certain idea if the OOH is working or not. ROI can be calculated from the increase in sales as well.

A very effective way of measuring the sales caused by a certain outdoor advertisement is the use of campaign-specific QR or coupon codes. If you mention the discount code only in a certain campaign, anyone who used the code at checkout is surely directed from that ad. This will make measuring the campaign’s impacts easy and accurate.

Many other tricks and methods can be implied such as campaign-specific microsites, hashtag metrics, or simply asking the customers where they heard about you. These are all easy-to-use effective methods that can help you decide whether you want to invest in OOH or not.

Why Should One Use OOH for Advertising?

We spend a massive amount of time outside, almost every day. Most people who work out of their house, spend a large chunk of their day routing. Moreover, we all go out for leisure, shopping, entertainment, and many more necessities. A large amount of these outdoorsy moments, we are not indulged completely into anything leaving space in our minds for engaging with advertisements. Out Of Home advertising takes advantage of the situation.

Often people who even own a car are still taking the bus or using ride-sharing services just to avoid the hustle of finding a parking spot or driving themselves. It leaves plenty of time for them to look around and see all the interesting advertisements put outdoors.

Many consumers prefer looking at an outdoor advertisement because it’s less cluttered and more fun. And, of course, because it’s less intrusive. It’s dynamic and ever-growing. A brand can use outdoor advertisements for more than one purpose, ranging from branding to promoting a product as well as a special event or sale.

The dynamicity and flexibility of Out Of Home advertising is what makes it stick and never get old. You can replicate almost anything you visualize and find fun in the process of advertising while reaching a sort of mass audience you wouldn’t otherwise.

Do you want to create an impactful outdoor advertisement for your brand as well? Connect with us and enter the future of OOH -TECH in Bangladesh.