Having rapidly increased its digital offering, the OOH sector is now firmly on its own programmatic journey, however it is early days, admitted Lee Cutter, VP Sales UK at Hivestack, speaking at the company’s summit on DOOH.
Out of a total market of around £901m, programmatic DOOH currently only accounts for about £20m or just 2.2%, but that is set to change quickly.
Rapid growth curve
“If you look at online and audio, about 70% of their spend was programmatic in six years. We believe programmatic should take a 10% share of DOOH by the end of the year, which yes is ambitious but also absolutely achievable if you look at where other channels have gone,” said Cutter.
To achieve this, he outlined 10 challenges the industry faces, from building the digital infrastructure and educating advertisers about what programmatic DOOH can provide, to improving measurement, demonstrating flexibility, and developing a global reach.
With such wide-reaching tasks ahead, Hivestack managing director EMEA, Will Brownsdon asked a panel of DOOH specialists how the sector could capitalise on this huge opportunity.
Test and learn
JCDecaux has been exploring trading by CPM for five years and Kate Tovey, director of customer engagement, said it had been upskilling internally since then.
“There’s a lot of on-the-job learning – you just need to get stuck in with a test and learn mindset,” she said.
Tovey advised preparing robust case studies of where programmatic DOOH has worked and being honest about when it was appropriate, because it’s not right for everything.
The promise of programmatic technology is one of the things that kept the conversational doors open for DOOH during the pandemic, said Roy Shepherd, Goodstuff head of out of home.
“Some of the pieces of work we’re most proud of like Brewdog ‘Tapping into hazy moments’ for Hazy Jane are examples of how we could go to a client and say ‘we’ve got something completely new to talk to you about’,” he said.
Data is opening up hitherto unimagined opportunities such as utilising the results of social listening to serve DOOH in the moment, said Tovey.
Lucy Cutter, head of planning, Kinetic Worldwide said programmatic DOOH is starting to find its place in the omnichannel mix.
“I’ve been involved in a campaign for Q4, and we’ve worked really closely with the digital teams at Xaxis for a big campaign that’s across classic digital programmatic and all of the other channels as well,” she said.
Triggered activity
Kinetic has worked with the Times on topical political tie-ins, but currently only about 10% of campaigns have this sort of trigger – there are lots of other openings.
“There isn’t a trigger now that you can’t activate a campaign with,” said Cutter.
The technology could also help unlock longer term relationships and brand building activity.
Shepherd said that clients such as Fever Tree are taking a longer term approach with guaranteed and non-guaranteed buys.
“They’ll use two-thirds of the budget on the launch with the remainder around key events across the summer, so it’s sustained but super relevant,” he said.
Global campaigns
Programmatic is also opening DOOH up to more international campaigns, said Greg West, international sales director Hivestack, who highlighted the “Outside-In” opportunities across more than 25 countries it operates in.
Hivestack offers access to more than 400 media companies, half a million screens, and half a trillion impressions a month, with that figure growing quickly, especially in Asian markets.
“Previously, it’s been quite siloed in terms of budgets which are generally domestic budgets for DOOH, but the international budgets are there and programmatic really pushes that forward now,” he said.
It’s not just reach though. Programmatic is smarter too with increasingly targeted opportunities. West presented the opportunity to use data from flight trackers and airline data to identify the types of flyers who might be in an airport lounge in a two-hour window and target them in that slot.
Shared learnings
DOOH isn’t the first media channel to go on a programmatic journey, and global CRO of Hivestack, Nigel Clarkson invited panellists to consider lessons from other sectors.
“Hivestack launched about two years ago in the UK, whereas other channels like online and press are eight, nine years down the line on this,” he said.
Sylvia Sparry, global chief transformation officer, GroupM Nexus, spoke of an initial ‘chicken and egg’ problem in that there was a need to have premium media supply, but to attract it, the supply wanted to see the premium demand.
“We needed to prove to advertisers that programmatic is a forum within which they can access good quality supply and to prove to publishers that they can still monetise to a level where programmatic isn’t cannibalising existing revenue streams,” she said.
Jay Rajdev, controller of advanced advertising, ITV explained how connected TV is driving reappraisal of TV, making it hyper targeted and a self-service option for businesses that would never previously have considered it.
“We’ve got small little digital agencies in Newcastle, a gas fitter in Glasgow, and a cinema in Lowestoft, all advertising on ITV. What’s been a mainstay of OOH advertising, that regional accessibility, is a completely new space for us,” he said.
The beauty of other media channels having already made the mistakes in their programmatic journeys is the opportunity that DOOH has to learn from them.
It won’t prevent mistakes being made, but it should mean that programmatic DOOH fails better and quickly absorbs the lessons to build on the potential of this powerful technology for one of the oldest advertising mediums.
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