What Is OOH Advertising?
OOH ads are basically any real-world ads that you can find outside of your home. Some of the more popular forms of OOH advertising include billboards, bus stops, trash cans, bus benches, and anything else you may be able to slap an ad on out in the real world. OOH advertising can also include things like ads you see in taxis or at the airport.
While OOH advertising is traditional, that doesn’t mean it has to be boring. The best OOH ads are funny or interesting, causing people to snap a pic and share it on social media. Done right, you can get people to do the advertising for you.
This means you can get creative with your OOH ads so they drive consumer interest in both the ad and your product or service. The ad units can even create an interactive experience that people want to be a part of, like an installation that plays content as people walk past it.
You can also go the traditional route with OOH advertising, like placing your ads on buses and taxis. This tactic can be extremely effective because these vehicles are constantly on the move around the city.
The options for OOH advertising are near endless, and the specific ads you choose depend on your business, your target market, and the goals of your campaign.
How Effective Is OOH Advertising?
OOH advertising can be a very effective strategy for creating awareness or growing a customer base in specific local markets.
Whether you realize it or not, when you walk or drive past a billboard, you’re being exposed to the messaging, sometimes without you even realizing it. Passing a billboard one time, like on an interstate road trip, may make some impression, but is not as likely to lead to a conversion.
However, when people drive past your billboard regularly, like on their commute to work, your brand gets considerably more exposure and frequency per viewer. This type of exposure is excellent for building trust and recognition for your brand within a market.
Out-of-home ads also have the benefit of “digital crossover” opportunities like QR codes and specialized website URLs. The 2019 OOH Nielsen study found that 66% of smartphone users took action on their phones after seeing an OOH ad, with more than 40% searching a brand online.
OOH Ads Stand Out
Let’s be honest, it’s a lot easier to ignore a 250-pixel tall digital ad while scrolling through a website than it is to ignore a 15-foot tall billboard as you’re driving down the highway. In addition, there’s a certain legitimacy that comes from having a physical, real-world ad, that you just don’t get from advertising online.
While going viral on social media can be a great way to grab a ton of eyeballs all at once, the viral exposure tends to die down after a day or two. While this is great for short-term recognition, it’s not usually as effective at building long-term awareness and trust for a brand.
Maintaining a physical presence in your audience’s day-to-day lives helps to establish your brand in the mind of the consumer and position them positively towards your product or service.
Multi-pronged Approach
The best ad campaigns give both depth and breadth of coverage. You want a large group of people to see your ads, and to see them frequently enough that your message sticks in their brains.
That’s why an OOH advertising campaign works hand-in-hand with other forms of advertising like radio, satellite radio, and television advertising. By pairing your OOH campaigns with radio and television, you’re sure to establish the brand’s presence in a market.
Another way to make your OOH advertising successful is to combine it with digital and social media campaigns. This could involve tactics like incentivizing people to share photos of themselves in front of your billboards on their social media channels or placing QR codes on your billboards to drive viewers to targeted landing pages.
No matter what your product or service is, we can help you establish a strategy and set up the ideal integrated OOH ad campaign.
Measuring OOH Advertising
One of the most important aspects of any ad campaign is measuring how effective it is. Without the ability to measure your ad’s effectiveness, you’re handicapping yourself when it comes to things like understanding your ROAS and scaling your future ads.
Since OOH ads are physical ads in the real world, they can be a bit more difficult to measure than digital ads. However, there are a number of tactics that we use to get as much data as possible about who is seeing your OOH ads and how they are responding to them.
One way we do this is by placing customized website URLs, landing pages, and/or phone numbers on each of the different advertisements. We can then use analytic tools to determine how many times each one is used, and can better determine the effectiveness of each advertisement.
As mentioned above, we can also use more modern techniques like including a QR code in each advertisement. This will make it easier for the viewer to take the action (scanning a QR code is easier than typing in a web address) and will make sure that the user doesn’t get around your attribution by Googling your brand name and clicking through to your website.
A third option would be to include a unique discount or promotional code in each advertisement. When someone views your ad and uses the discount code on your website or in person at your business, you can then safely attribute that conversion to that specific advertisement.
No matter what method we are using for OOH attribution, we also pair this data with third-party data to get a better understanding of overall performance. This third-party data will tell us things like traffic density and total impressions in specific areas. With this information, we can then calculate KPIs like conversion rate and ROAS to get a much clearer picture of the campaign’s performance.
At The Remnant Agency, our primary objective is maximizing your ROAS. We’re able to achieve outstanding results for our clients by leveraging remnant OOH media. By buying remnant ad space, we attain high-value placements for your brand at a fraction of the cost. This means you will get exponentially more visibility on your ad for the same budget. Contact us today to learn more about our remnant advertising services.
What OOH Advertising Looks Like For You
When planning an OOH campaign, there are many different media options you can try and strategic directions you can take.
What options you choose to go with will really depend on your budget, your business, and how you serve customers. If you’re a local business that’s focusing on building its client base, things like bus and taxi ads are a great idea since they constantly circulate around a city. This ensures that your ads will be seen by as many people as possible within that given area.
Or, if you’re promoting a new product or brand, a few strategically placed billboards in high-traffic areas could bring thousands of new eyes to your messaging every day. For example, in a typical year, about 360,000 people walk through Times Square in New York City every day. This means that your ad would be seen 2,520,000 times in just one week!
If you’re unsure what OOH advertising method or methods are best for you, we’re happy to help you figure that out. Our team has nearly half a century of combined media buying experience, and we’re happy to share it with you. Contact us today to schedule a free consultation with a member of our team.
Typical Costs For OOH Advertising
OOH advertising is not the most expensive form of real-world advertising, but it’s certainly not the least expensive. The media costs will vary depending on the type of ad you’re running, how large of a space it’s running in, where it’s running, and several other factors.
On average, you can expect to spend anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000 per month on an OOH campaign when you work with The Remnant Agency. However, unlike other advertising agencies, when you work with us we’re able to get you exponentially more impressions for your budget.
When our media partners have OOH ad space that they have not been able to sell, they will let the space go at the last minute for a huge discount so that they don’t miss out on any potential profits. Our ads run in all of the same places that a normal ad would, the only difference is you’re getting more bang for your buck.
Start An OOH Advertising Campaign With The Remnant Agency
Working with an OOH advertising agency like The Remnant Agency takes the headache out of running an out-of-home campaign. Let us worry about things like creative assets, media buying, and messaging while you worry about dealing with the influx of new customers.
If you’d like to learn more about OOH advertising and what The Remnant Agency can do for your business or brand, send us an email or give us a call today. Our team is standing by to talk with you about your campaign.
