Digital Out of Home: The Final Frontier in Video Advertising

Intersection Staff
IxN — The Intersection Blog
3 min readApr 20, 2021

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By Ari Buchalter, CEO

American Eagle’s TikTok video campaign on LinkNYC

Digital video advertising is among the fastest growing channels, but demand is far outstripping quality supply. Enter Digital OOH — higher reach than TV, greater brand safety than online video, and with all the targetability and measurement of digital.

It’s well-known that Digital OOH (DOOH) advertising has been experiencing a boom, but what’s often overlooked is that DOOH represents a video network of unparalleled scale, quality, and effectiveness. Digital screens are ubiquitous — located in places as varied as city centers, highways, bars, gyms, elevators, taxis, gas stations, grocery stores, doctors’ offices, and more — with a rich diversity of formats ranging from giant billboards to personal interactive screens. They also offer powerful benefits as compared to more familiar video channels like TV and online.

Instagram Reels video advertisement in a Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) station

Linear broadcast TV was traditionally known for its reach, but fragmentation from the growth of cable and competing consumption on personal devices has steadily eroded the ability of linear TV to deliver a massive audience. Streaming services have now put TV fragmentation into overdrive, but those offerings are generally subscription-driven on-demand services that simply don’t offer comparable scale when it comes to advertising. DOOH screens, now numbering well over one million in the US alone according to the DPAA, can generate tremendous reach and frequency, but at much lower cost than it would take to achieve similar results via traditional TV (where CPMs have skyrocketed to offset lower demand). Moreover, while TV advertising of any form reaches consumers in “couch potato mode,” DOOH engages consumers on their active daily journeys between home, work, shopping and entertainment, where they are forming opinions, making decisions, and buying products. And unlike TV, DOOH ads can’t be skipped or paused. In short DOOH delivers higher reach and engagement than linear TV or OTT/CTV, at a fraction of the price.

Online video has captured large audiences, particularly those interested in snacking on the latest trending videos. Viewability and bot fraud are ever-present challenges (with fraud also being a prevalent issue in CTV), but perhaps the biggest issue brands face with online video is brand safety. Low-quality UGC, negative news, objectionable or inappropriate content, or simply a misalignment between the content and the ad can undermine the connection between brand and consumer. DOOH screens are typically either content-free or curated for high-quality, contextually relevant content, guaranteeing a safe and controlled environment for brands. And in contrast to online video, DOOH ads always render in view and are never seen by bots.

The story gets even more interesting when you consider that the overlay of rich location data has put targeting and measurement of DOOH on par with other digital channels. Campaigns can now be targeted based on first-party and third-party audience data, matching screens to locations that index highest against desired target audiences. “Physical contextual” targeting can also be employed (think online contextual, but for the real world) to ensure alignment between the message and the surrounding physical environment, whether it’s a sporting arena, a grocery check-out counter, or a doctor’s office. On the measurement front, it is now common practice for DOOH campaigns to measure KPIs across the funnel, from lift in brand awareness, to in-store foot traffic, to app downloads, to online purchases. Some platforms even enable lower-funnel metrics like CPA and ROI to be measured in exactly the same way and using the same log-level impression data and attribution methodologies as for online and mobile advertising.

Finally, programmatic integrations between some DOOH SSPs and leading omni-channel DSPs mean advertisers can not only use pre-existing video assets but also leverage the same automation and workflows as for other programmatic channels. From pre-campaign setup, to mid-campaign optimization, to post-campaign measurement and analytics, buyers can now execute and manage DOOH video campaigns through the same DSP tools and systems used for other video executions, right down to support for video engagement metrics and third-party ad server tracking and reporting.

Video has already gone from our living rooms and desktops to our palms and our laptops. It’s now time to take it to the streets and watch what video in the real world can do.

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