Experts say that out-of-home advertising (OOH) drives more engagement per ad dollar spent than any other traditional media. But seeing value in OOH advertising and building a successful OOH channel from scratch are two entirely different things.
Digital signage software helps simplify the channel creation process so that businesses can enjoy the fruits of their strategy much faster. Below, we’ll tell you more about what OOH advertising is, why it matters, and how it will help your company reach its goals.
Understanding OOH advertising
Out-of-home (OOH) advertising is a fairly broad term. It encompasses any type of advertising media that exists outside of the home. For example, each of the following is a type of OOH advertising:
- Billboards
- Outdoor and indoor signs
- Ads on cars, bus stops and taxis
- In-venue digital signage
- Ads in theaters before previews start
Spending on OOH continues to grow in the United States and beyond. In 2020, companies spent nearly $29 billion on OOH across the globe.
Digital vs static OOH advertising
This is one point of distinction that’s worth making as you build your company’s OOH strategy. Digital OOH ads are dynamic. They exist on smart screens like digital billboards, digital posters and even televisions.
Companies that use these ads have more control over how they change over time. They can track which ads perform well and make changes to underperformers faster and at a lower cost.
Static OOH advertising can be effective too, however, it is tougher to change a static poster, traditional billboard, or painted sign if it isn’t performing up to expectations.
Why OOH advertising matters
Advertisers spend money on OOH ads because they are effective. Here are three reasons why that’s true.
Get past ad blockers
Ad blockers are the scourge of online advertising. Nearly 30% of Americans use ad blockers and 46.2% of users between 16 and 24 years old use one too. That’s a significant portion of a company’s intended audience that they won’t reach with standard online ads.
But there are no ad blockers in the real world. When you display an OOH ad on a digital billboard or a smart screen, all of your intended audience will see it, instead of just 60-70% of it. That’s a significant difference to have a meaningful impact on the effectiveness of your campaigns.
Build brand familiarity with your target audience
OOH ads are also fantastic for building familiarity with your audience. You can then leverage this brand familiarity to improve the effectiveness of your campaigns on other marketing channels.
For example, Nielsen found that 46% of adults conducted an online search after seeing a product in an OOH ad. Similarly, research from Ocean NeuroScience shows that consumers are 48% more likely to click on a mobile ad after seeing the same copy displayed as an OOH ad first.
Smart companies can take advantage of this. By adding an OOH channel to an existing in-home campaign, your business could see significant growth in the engagement that it gets.
Take advantage of easing COVID restrictions
There’s never been a better time to get started with OOH advertising. The government has eased COVID restrictions and people are taking advantage of it by getting out of the house more often.
As people spend more time in public places, the opportunities available for forward-thinking companies grow larger. Many more people will see your OOH ads now than in late 2020 and early 2021.
Why digital signage for OOH advertising
Digital signage software makes OOH advertising much easier. It simplifies each phase of both the channel creation and deployment processes. For example, with digital signage, you will find it much easier to:
- Create new OOH advertisements
- Schedule your OOH ads optimally
- Track the performance of your ads over time
- Manage the deployment of your OOH ads across numerous screens from a single point of control
The bottom line is that digital signage software makes it much easier to create compelling, dynamic OOH content and share it with the world. When you invest in digital signage software, each phase of the OOH marketing process takes up less of your time and money. That ultimately often leads to increases in profits and productivity for your company.
Building a signage platform
Now that we know why OOH advertising matters and why digital signage is the best solution for your strategy, it’s time to delve into the process of creating your digital signage platform.
In this section, we’ll provide step-by-step instructions you can follow to select the best OOH advertising plan for your company’s unique concerns.
Select your digital signage software
The first thing to do is pick which digital signage software you’ll use. The key is finding a solution that offers you each of the following:
- Support for every type of media that matters
- Excellent security and stability
- Customizable marketing tools
- Scalability
- Metrics to track performance over time
UPshow provides you with all of these functions and more. Our solution comes with a robust suite of analytics tools so you can determine exactly what your ads need to reach their full potential.
We also make it incredibly easy to integrate value-adding features like QR codes, users’ social media posts and more into your campaigns. You can even use UPshow to stream more than 500 channels of entertainment to your audience.
With UPshow, you get everything that you need to optimize your OOH campaigns and drive the increase in revenue that you’ve been working towards.
Reach out to us to learn more about what we can do to help your company reach its goals.
Create your campaigns
Once you’ve selected your digital signage software, it’ll be time for you to create your campaign. Many solutions allow you to choose from numerous templates to simplify the design process. But you also have the option of importing a custom design from an artist that you’re already working with.
This stage of the process is when the benefits of digital OOH advertising over static OOH advertising come into their own. You can create complex digital ads with animations, videos, and high-resolution imagery. These types of ads are more attention-grabbing than static printed ads and could help to drive more engagement for your campaigns.
Link your new OOH campaigns with existing ones
Once you’ve decided what you want your OOH campaigns to look like, it will be time to combine them with your existing campaigns. Digital OOH ads make this much easier to do.
For example, you can add QR codes to your digital ads with links that direct your audience to existing channels. You might send a customer to a sign-up form for your email list. You could direct them to the app store to download your application.
The flexibility of digital signage opens up countless possibilities like these for your company to interweave its campaigns with one another and create a more complete web for trapping new leads.
Deploy your content and track its performance over time
Next up is deployment. This is when you send your ads out across the various screens in your OOH network.
This might sound complex, but it’s actually fairly straightforward if you have the right software. For example, you can use UPshow to manage your entire OOH ad deployment scheme on any internet-enabled device. This makes it incredibly easy to make updates and changes the moment you identify a need for them.
Update your ads based on your preferred metrics
As your ads run, you will be able to track their performance with whatever metrics matter most to you. That being said, the most popular metrics for tracking the performance of OOH ads are:
- Impressions
- Demographics
- Digital trails
- Visibility research
You might also have an in-house metric that you prefer using. Regardless, as data comes in about the effectiveness of your ads, you can quickly and easily make as many updates as you need to until you get them right.
This is one of the biggest reasons why most companies prefer digital out-of-home advertising (DOOH) to static OOH ads. The channel gives you a level of control over your campaigns that can be tough to find elsewhere.
UPshow makes OOH advertising easier
If you’re ready to make OOH advertising a part of your broader marketing strategy, then UPshow is here to help. Our software helps companies generate millions of impressions with customized and dynamic OOH campaigns.
You can even use UPshow in your venue to broadcast streaming entertainment, engage your guests with fun games (trivia night, anyone?), and promote the products that you want to sell more of in whatever ways you think will make it happen.
So why wait? You can take the first step towards embracing the OOH advertising revolution today by filling out this form for a free demo. We look forward to hearing from you.
