The Ultimate Guide to DOOH Marketing

Welcome to OneScreen.AI’s ultimate guide to digital out of home (DOOH) marketing. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore DOOH as a marketing channel, compare it to traditional OOH advertising, evaluate its recent growth and outline strategies for marketing teams to best leverage DOOH. We’ll showcase some innovative examples of DOOH advertising and share the results they’ve delivered for customers. This guide will equip you with the knowledge and strategies to best leverage the power of DOOH to meet your marketing goals.  

What is DOOH Marketing?

DOOH marketing stands for Digital Out-Of-Home marketing. It refers to digital media like a video, animation, or imagery used for marketing outside of the home. In DOOH marketing (also known as DOOH advertising), promotional materials are dynamically and digitally displayed in indoor and outdoor public spaces. 

Examples of DOOH Marketing

DOOH is an increasingly popular strategy for marketing and advertising teams, and it can take on a wide range of formats. Some of the most common formats or placements for digital out of home advertisements include:

1. Transportation Centers - screens in airports, train stations, bus stops, etc.
2. Shopping Centers - screens on busy shopping streets or in shopping malls
3. Transit Vehicles - digital displays in subway cars, on top of taxi cabs
4. Special Events - Digital signage during a sporting event or concert 

This is not an exhaustive list, but these are some of the most common examples of digital out-of-home placements.

DOOH vs. OOH: What's the Difference?

Out-of-Home or OOH advertising is a broad category, of which DOOH is a subset. OOH advertising is the strategy of advertising for a product or service in the physical world. Think billboards, signage, ads in taxi cabs, and any other ad you'd see while going about your day, DOOH advertising is a type of out-of-home (OOH) advertising that includes digital elements. Simply put, if an ad is viewed by the consumer on a digital screen or digital signage, it’s DOOH. If it’s a physical sign or printed image, it’s OOH. 

The digital delivery can make the advertisements more engaging, interactive, and efficient to run. Traditional OOH advertising, like large billboards, take time to plan, build, print and deploy. It isn't easy to swap out or test different messages. Once you hang something, it stays there until the campaign is complete. But with DOOH, marketing teams can more easily adjust placement, copy or imagery, to improve campaign performance. 

What is Programmatic DOOH? 

Another popular term in the DOOH advertising space is programmatic DOOH. Programmatic digital out-of-home adds a layer of data to get the DOOH ad in front of the right prospect.  A digital billboard itself is considered “DOOH”. But when a digital billboard is activated strategically, only at particular times of the day when your target audience will see it, that’s programmatic DOOH.

According to BroadSign, there are many types of data that can be used to run these programmatic DOOH campaigns. “The key to understanding programmatic DOOH is this: programmatic transactions allow you to set specific conditions, based on external data, that will trigger the purchase of a DOOH ad slot.” The company explains. “There are really simple options, like just having different creatives delivered based on the time of day. There are also slightly more advanced options, like the weather, daily market performance, or the ongoing results of a sporting event.” 

DOOH: A Growing Marketing Channel 

As our world readjusts to the post-covid “norm”, many people are getting back out into the physical world. They are returning to the office for work, traveling for work and fun, shopping in brick-and-mortar stores, and spending more money on the experience economy. This all means a resurgence in opportunities for out-of-home advertisements. 

The Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA) - a trade association for the US out of home advertising (OOH) industry - recently reported strong growth projections for the OOH market in 2023.

“The experience economy continues to surge, as evidenced by the huge jump in the travel category last quarter. While other traditional media remain in decline, MAGNA projects the out of home industry to grow 4.2% this year, proving the platform serves as an efficient, effective, and engaging conduit for brands looking to earn the attention of on-the-go consumers in an age of distraction and digital fatigue.”  

• • • • Anna Bager, President & CEO, The OOH Advertising Association of America (OAAA) 

Digital-out-of-home in particular is projected to grow at even a faster rate. According to Straits Research, the global digital out-of-home advertising market size was valued at $18.98 billion in 2021, and it is projected to reach $57.93 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 13.20% from 2022–2030.  

Why Marketers Choose DOOH over Digital Advertising

Marketing leaders have many tactics and strategies available to them to drive brand awareness, capture prospect attention and communicate with their customers. Once a booming channel, digital advertising spend has declined for 10 straight months from 2022 into 2023, as marketers consider other ways to spend their budget. One of those alternative tactics they're trying is DOOH. 

Here are some of the key reasons why marketers are increasing their investment in Digital out-of-home and moving budget away from traditional digital advertising. 

1. Digital Fatigue Among Gen Z is Increasing - it's been widely reported that digital fatigue is on the rise among Generation Z. Some key findings are displayed in Deloitte’s research below. 
   
2. The Experience Economy Is Growing - Gen Z is also seeking to have more experiences in the physical world rather than the digital one. OOH may be a better advertising choice to reach this digitally fatigued generation. Or, a mix of both - an immersive physical and digital experience.
3. DOOH Is Becoming More Measurable - measurement the age-old argument for choosing a digital campaign over an OOH advertising campaign. But with new tracking and measurement technology from leading OOH and DOOH providers, that’s now a moot point.
   

Running a Successful DOOH Campaign

OneScreen.AII empowers marketers to buy, deploy, and measure OOH and DOOH campaigns, Using real-world behavioral targeting and advanced analytics. Our expert team has compiled the following best practices for a successful, measurable DOOH campaign.

Best Practices For DOOH Campaigns 

1. Embrace Dynamic Content. One of the benefits of a DOOH campaign compared to a traditional OOH campaign is that creative can be dynamic, allowing for quick copy changes, enhanced contextual relevance and social media tie-ins to drive engagement. Sometimes, DOOH advertisements can be interactive, like a screen inside a taxi cab that a consumer can touch. On some formats, there are even options to integrate features like augmented reality, gestural interaction and anamorphic illusions! Consider the options available to you to make the content more exciting and engaging.
2. Align Creative and Media Experts. OneScreen.AI’s Director of Media Planning Jennifer Nelson shared her perspective on this ‘common pitfall’ of OOH campaigns. “I’ve seen poorly designed creative negatively impact campaigns many times in my career. The root cause of this issue is usually a disconnect between media teams and creative teams. At times, the media team is only pulled into the process after the creative is already done and approved." Bringing media experts in early can help ensure everything is put together to drive maximum impact and comprehension of digital signage. When it comes to OOH and DOOH copy and design, keep it simple! Under 7 words is best, with the largest, most easy to read copy possible.
3. Clarify Objectives and KPIs. It is important to define what success means to your brand prior to beginning the DOOH planning process. What is the top priority for your campaign? To drive website visits? To drive foot traffic to a physical location? To increase brand awareness? To promote a new product? These objectives will form the foundation of your DOOH marketing strategy and will allow you to determine whether your campaign was successful as measured against your KPIs.
4. Leverage Real-Time Audience Data. Building a successful marketing plan means knowing how to reach your target audience - and DOOH marketing is no exception. The real-time data used for digital out-of-home comes from geofencing and tracking of anonymous mobile pixels (which we cover in more detail in the final section). At OneScreen.ai, we monitor and consume about 35 different data sources into our platform to help identify audience behaviors and movement patterns. Using this data can empower you to build really specific campaigns and identify inventory that makes the most sense to reach your audience. 
5. Launch DOOH in Sync With Other Media. Traditional OOH often lives in the minds of marketers as a separate running campaign. It's almost like it exists on an island, with it's own messaging and it's own goals. But OOH and DOOH advertising has been proven to amplify the performance of other channels, including social media and digital display advertisements. So don't think of OOH as a separate campaign. Take full advantage of this by maintaining consistency across all channels and even executing cross-channel promotions!

Examples of DOOH Advertising

OneScreen.Ai works with top brands of all company sizes to run engaging DOOH campaigns and campaigns that combine OOH and DOOH together to maximize ROI. Here are a few recent examples: 

Greenhouse.io's Digital Surround Sound in Las Vegas

Greenhouse is an applicant tracking software business. The company ran a DOOH marketing campaign surrounding an event in Las Vegas. Their digital billboards included placements in the Las Vegas Airport and on massive digital screens on Las Vegas boulevard. Conference attendees saw engaging digital advertisements throughout their journey to and from the event.

 

Fivetran's Integrated DOOH and OOH Campaign in London

Fivetran is an automated data movement platform that moves data in, out and across cloud data platforms. Their latest brand campaign included an integrated mix of DOOH advertisements and physical OOH placements in London, as well as wrapped taxi cabs: 

How to Measure OOH and DOOH Campaign Success

ROI is the name of the game for the modern marketer. A winning marketing strategy in today’s competitive landscape focuses on efficiency, precision targeting, and driving practical outcomes. One major shift in the world of OOH advertising in recent years has been measurement ability. New technology and consumer data have come together to empower leading companies to better track the impact of their out-of-home campaigns. 

The Old WAY TO TRACK Out-Of-Home 

The key metric for OOH advertising has historically been impression counts. An “impression” is simply a count of when someone sees an ad. So the total number of impressions is the total number of times an ad has been seen by its audience. Measuring impression metrics is not an exact science for OOH or DOOH. It’s rather a ‘best guess’ approach using various data inputs and technologies such as traffic cameras, GPS tracking, or mobile data analysis. These methods provide insights into the number of people exposed to your ad. 

The biggest criticism of impressions as a metric, particularly for today’s performance-oriented marketer, is that it’s not super actionable data. It’s simply a count of people, but you don’t know anything about who those people are. When you launch a campaign, it's typically built around a specific amount of impressions you are paying for. Once you hit those impressions, your campaign ends. It’s often a “yes/no” reporting scenario without any context - until recently. 

The New Way TO Track OUT-OF-HOME

New methods of tracking have entered the market and are giving marketers a better set of data to measure the impact of their OOH marketing campaigns. Advances in mobile technology in particular have empowered better tracking of DOOH and OOH placements. A few important terms to understand are: 

• Mobile Advertising ID or MAID -  a unique, anonymous alphanumeric identifier that iOS or Android assigns to each mobile device. MAIDs connect activity back to a real person.
• Viewshed - the radius in front of the ad placement in which a person could see the ad.
• Lookback window - the time period during which you’re tracking the impact of your ad.
• Geofence- a virtual geographic boundary, in this case used around a physical location.

Here's a general picture of how the team at OneScreen.AI uses these elements to track the impact of a particular billboard - OneScreen.AI's platform exposes mobile devices that likely entered the inventory's viewable area. For a digital ad, that would mean tracking only the specific times that the ad was displayed, since typically digital ad placements rotate. Then, OneScreen.AI identifies which of those same devices took the desired action within the lookback window, based on customer preference. This action might be visiting a website, downloading an app, or entering a retail location that has been geofenced. For example, if the objective of the campaign is "visiting the website", OneScreen would identify how many of the devices that encountered the billboard also visited the website within the designated lookback window in its lift analysis, and expose those MAIDs for omni-channel retargeting. 

Analyzing DOOH Data

It's important to have a baseline to compare this dataset to in order to see overall campaign impact. OneScreen.AI’s unique Lift Analysis process compares the dataset to a group of MAIDS that did not enter the viewshed. Marketers can see the impact of that specific ad on their business goal, compared to a control group. 

This data can also be cut a number of ways to identify campaign elements that are delivering results or not working well. The data can be viewed and analyzed by format, media type, location, etc. Marketers can look at the data from all different angles to gather learnings and improve their next campaign.

Make Your DOOH Drive ROI with OneScreen 

Marketing leaders today are being challenged to prove the value of their investments. They’re increasingly tracking their performance metrics and adjusting spend on different channels to deliver on business goals. OOH advertising was not traditionally a medium that fell into the "easy to track" category, but the landscape has changed significantly with tools like OneScreen.AI and advances in mobile tracking and geofencing.

The way OOH advertising is served up to clients has changed, too. Digital out-of-home ads can reach the experience-seeking, digitally exhausted Gen Z with engaging messages all along the journey of their daily lives. And unlike traditional OOH advertising, these messages can 1) be delivered to your target audience in a flashy, eye-catching video or interactive format and 2) they can be adjusted quickly to improve performance. 

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Working with the knowledgable experts at OneScreen.AI can help you run a successful campaign that leverages DOOH and OOH in the most modern, efficient way.