Many DTC brands spend the majority of their advertising dollars on digital ads. This holiday season, you can expect to see DTC and B2C brands ramping up their digital advertising efforts to promote Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and other events.

Unfortunately, adding more digital advertising might not get the results you want, especially as consumers experience increasing digital ad fatigue. 

The good news is that you can leverage out-of-home advertising (OOH) to engage consumers by complementing your digital ad strategy to deliver a more omnichannel approach.

What is Digital Ad Fatigue?

Imagine you're playing a game on your smartphone. The app shows you the same ad between every level. After four or five levels, you start rolling your eyes at the ad. This is digital ad fatigue.

DTC brands use digital advertising because it helps them reach their audiences on devices they spend a great deal of time. In 2024, researchers expect brands to spend billions on digital ads. U.S. brands will likely spend:

• $90.73 billion on search engine ads
• $86.75 billion on social media outreach
• $7.12 billion on digital audio services

By contrast, they'll spend about $9.19 billion on OOH advertising.

To be clear, companies invest in digital ads because they provide an easy way to reach large audiences. Digital advertising also makes it easy to measure and collect data marketers can use to fine-tune their campaigns.

Still, most consumers call online ads "annoying." They likely find them even more annoying as they see Black Friday ads every time they use their phone or tablet. Whether they use Google to search for information, visit Facebook to see what loved ones are posting, or watch videos on TikTok, their experiences get interrupted by ads.

OOH Can Help Relieve Digital Ad Fatigue

OOH advertising takes your marketing assets into the real world where the message feels less intrusive. 

Common OOH advertising placement options include:

• Billboards - both digital and static boards
• Public transit (buses, trains, subways, etc.)
• Posters
• Airports
• Street furniture (bus shelters, benches, etc.)
• Bridges
• Murals
• Digital billboards

These simple insights show a better way forward that helps relieve digital ad fatigue.

Commit to Fewer Digital Ads

By including OOH in your ad strategy, you can reduce the number of digital ads you use. Instead of interrupting customer’s online experiences repeatedly, you can create more focused ads that reach customers at strategic times and places. 

In addition to reducing digital ad fatigue, this approach could help you save ad budget to reallocate to alternative channels. While prices depend on several factors, OOH advertising can cost equal to digital advertising campaigns. Research shows that companies using OOH see a 50% increase in monthly revenue by adding the channel to their mix.

By embracing OOH, you can spend less money while improving your return on investment (ROI).

More Meaningful, Targeted Digital Ads

Contrary to popular belief, OOH ads can be targeted. They also open the door to more meaningful, targeted digital assets that can improve engagement for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and similar events.

Imagine you're sitting on a train when you spot an ad that interests you. Perhaps it's about a product a loved one would like this holiday season. You think about buying it as a gift, but you want to learn more first. 

Luckily, the ad has a QR code you can scan. The code takes you directly to the product's landing page, where you can get all of the information you need and finalize your purchase.

That landing page contains a tracking pixel to identify and track who was exposed to that ad using MObile ID technology and can attribute that purchase back to someone exposed to the OOH ad. Measurability and attribution are ways OOH delivers ROI results for DTC brands, similar to how DTC marketers are used to measuring digital campaigns. 

Connecting digital assets to OOH ads also lets brands target consumers by location. The product's landing page, and OOH creative, for someone in Chicago might look very different from the landing page and creative intended for consumers in Miami. 

As long as the marketer keeps each landing page relevant to visitors, they can avoid digital ad fatigue. But it's only possible because OOH ads grabbed the consumer's attention and directed them toward a meaningful experience online. 

The Power of OOH Advertising

This holiday season, consumers will see countless ads on their computers, smart TVs, and mobile devices. Digital ad fatigue is almost inevitable. 

OOH gives you chances to keep consumers engaged without overwhelming or annoying them, but by complementing the similar creative messaging from digital in real-world executions. 

OOH advertising works, especially when combined with digital ads to provide an omnichannel approach to deliver the necessary number of brand impressions across the widest range of ad mediums. 

Several companies have already discovered the benefits of embracing OOH.

Cozy Earth

Cozy Earth sells high-end bed linens, bath linens, and loungewear. The company had already been noted by Oprah Winfrey and other celebrities, but it needed an effective way to increase brand awareness and sales.

Cozy Earth worked with OneScreen to help create an OOH campaign that would reach both of those goals. 

OneScreen.ai developed a strategic campaign that targeted consumers in the Salt Lake City region based on demographic data. The ads consisted of nine digital billboards and one static bulletin. During the 10-week campaign, Cozy Earth noticed that its website's direct traffic grew by 38% and that its search traffic increased by 35%.

These results make it clear that OOH advertising can contribute to the success of digital assets without contributing to digital ad fatigue.

Leading Smart Ring

People typically lose sleep when daylight savings time begins. One leading smart ring brand wanted to take advantage of the time change to highlight the importance of sleep hygiene.

OneScreen put together a three-week media flight that included digital billboards and full-motion digital spectacles (very large digital billboards like those you might see in Times Square) in NYC based on the high concentration of health-conscious buyers. The plan also included ads on taxis and public transit for buyers on their commutes.

The results implementing a strategic OOH campaign? 

The smart ring brand saw:

• An 82% increase in purchase intent
• A 125% lift in homepage visits
• A 222% conversion lift in order conversion

Reduce Digital Ad Fatigue This Black Friday

Digital advertising is a given this BFCM holiday shopping season. Don’t rely on a handful of digital-only channels when you can complement your exposure with measurable OOH ads to extend the story in real life. 

Get a free assessment for your DTC brand on how easy it is to add targeted and measurable OOH advertising to your holiday shopping mix with OneScreen.