We’re champions of out-of-home media (OOH). (Like, we’re the obnoxious fans waving the big #1 foam finger and rooting at the top of our lungs.) And after reading this post, you will be, too. The OOH industry is prospering in 2019. For good reasons! Below are the benefits of OOH media, and why you should be using more OOH in your media plans.

1. OOH Reaches People
OOH media formats surround and reach consumers during the 70 percent of their day spent away from home. As people go out and about, commuting or shopping or walking their dog or searching for their favorite frappe, they are exposed to OOH messages.

The 2016 Nielsen Out-of-Home Advertising Study shows 91% of United States residents over age 16 are reached by out-of-home. In the past month, 80% of these U.S. residents noticed an OOH ad, and 82% of billboard viewers make a point to look at the advertising message. (No banner blindness here!)

OOH is a mix of physical media formats. They cannot be skipped, blocked, viewed by bots or deleted. OOH formats are tangible real estate that get noticed in the real world.

With OOH, you can achieve massive reach within a market. It provides marketers a broad stroke to raise brand awareness and recall.

2. OOH Media is Highly Targeted
Out-of-home placements are location-specific. Each location is strategically selected to aim your message at the precise audience you’re trying to engage.

Location-based marketing leverages mobile data to identify patterns of travel throughout a day. This data can then be used as insight to determine where you should place your OOH messages. It allows you to craft audiences in the real world – and serve them your messages on physical media. Today, advertisers can apply audience segmentation into their OOH media planning.

Some media formats are more laser-focused. Mobile billboards, for example, follow a prescribed route customized to reach your precise audience. We can predict when and where your target audience will be and intercept them with your message. With proximity marketing, we can dominate strategic locations: grand openings, events, trade shows, high traffic areas, specific zip codes, competitor locations, etc.

OOH is still very relevant in today’s media landscape. By leveraging data insights, we can engage with your audience during key moments in their day. This allows for maximum exposure – to the exact right people. Broad reach, narrow focus.

3. OOH is Well Perceived
More so than other forms of advertising, when people consume OOH messages, they feel confident, excited, hopeful, positive and happy. Consumers trust out-of-home. Next to print, people perceive OOH as a very credible source of information.

Public opinion polls discovered that more than 85% of people believe billboards provide useful information and 83% find OOH informative.

The creative can also invite people to interact with the brand in a more hands-on fashion. This creates positive moments shared between a brand and its key audience. These moments can also create happiness and more good vibes around the medium.

Because OOH is a well perceived media channel, you can use OOH messaging to influence brand perception and purchase decisions.

4. OOH Allows for Creative Impact
Big billboards offer big canvasses for brand creative. Size does matter when you’re cutting through the clutter of our everyday environments. But being positioned in the public domain of the real world is a clear benefit. It means you have greater control over where your brand is placed, contextually speaking. With digital or print, you may end up published alongside offensive content that can damage your brand without you having full control over that placement, for example. With OOH, consumers are more cognizant of the paid space and don’t associate you with the next billboard down the road. (They, themselves, are juxtaposed next to your message.)

OOH gives your creative team a chance to be loud, eye-catching and daring. Award-winning OOH examples use bold visuals paired with clever headlines.

We recommend OOH creative be: simple but bold, include a clear call-to-action and a compelling image to tie it all together. Use the location-based media format to be locally relevant with your message. Stretch the creative boundaries, but always stay authentic to the brand.

OOH media covers a wide range of creative options. It’s the OOH creative that drives genuine connections and lasting impressions.

5. OOH Drives Online Engagements
One of the biggest benefits of OOH media in today’s marketing mix is its ability to amplify other media channels.

Research by the ARF (The Advertising Research Foundation) shows there is incremental ROI of an overall media plan as more channels are added. A 2018 report conducted by Omnicom Media Group’s Benchmarketing found that increasing the allocation of OOH, specifically, to the media mix generates greater ROI. USA Touchpoints supports the other research, noting that the addition of OOH potentially increases the reach by up to 300%.

We’ve proven time and time again that pairing mobile display advertising to our OOH campaigns churns stronger results. You achieve higher click-through-rates when the OOH and mobile campaigns are planned together. Use unified creatives and deliver ads in both channels at the same key locations. The two channels reinforce each other and add frequency to the messaging. This one-two punch gets noticed in a consumer’s two worlds: digital and physical.

Ocean Outdoor and NeuroInsights discovered that 48% of people are more likely to click a mobile ad after seeing the same OOH ad. But clicks aren’t the only online engagements driven by OOH.

Nielsen’s Out-of-Home Online Activation Study shows OOH is the best driver of online engagements per dollar spent compared to other media channels. Of U.S. adults who have seen an OOH ad:

• 46% performed an online search
• 38% took an action on Facebook
• 23% took an action on Twitter
• 25% took an action on Instagram

When more OOH is allocated to the overall marketing mix, magic starts to happen. No fairy godmother required. OOH is quite the verifiable, effective marketing.

6. OOH Generates Consumer Action
OOH media has greatest impact on awareness, recommendation and purchase-intent metrics. It not only has massive reach in a market to maximize exposure among key audience(s), but it can truly trigger consumer behavior.

The Nielsen OOH Advertising Study reported specific actions taken after seeing an OOH ad:

• 21% visited a restaurant advertised
• 16% immediately visited the business advertised with a directional ad
• 20% watched a movie in the theater
• 19% tuned into a TV show
• 26% talked about the ad or product with others
• 23% interacted with the ad via NFC sensor or QR code
• 35% used mobile search to look up more information about the advertiser

It’s evident that OOH can stop us in our tracks – or train of thought – and motivate us to action.

7. OOH is Cost-Effective
OOH media formats give brands national reach at a relatively low cost. Advertisers should take advantage of the highly competitive CPM rates this channel offers. Scalability and wide market coverage are big benefits of OOH media, and to incorporate them is a cost-effective choice.

Most advertising dollars are allocated to traditional and digital channels. But wait!?! Why doesn’t OOH get a bigger share? OOH drives higher return-on-investment (ROI).

According to Omnicom Media Group’s Benchmarketing research, advertisers see a $5.97 return on every $1 spent on OOH. Yes, this is higher than that of other channels.

OOH shouldn’t be bought with what’s “leftover” – but rather, OOH should be driving the overall advertising investment. Yes, a balanced media mix is good. But OOH is an important part of that mix, yet it is often under-allocated.

Point: Stop overlooking OOH. It has real bottom line impact.

8. OOH Continues to Innovate
The OOH industry continues to innovate, making it more relevant than ever to advertisers. By working with digital marketing – not against it – we’ve established a solid seat at the strategy table.

The industry is also making waves in improved measurement. Geopath is working to standardize OOH measurements across the industry. OOH media vendors, like ourselves, are also exploring how to use mobile data or AI to record actual – not estimated – impressions from our campaigns. Integrating the campaign with mobile display advertisements gives us new ways to apply attribution to the medium.

Our industry is also growing due to programmatic benefits of having digital creative in the OOH environment. This allows for dynamic creative and quick ad changes. The DOOH industry is still in its infancy, and as we learn from the pioneering efforts, we’ll adopt even better digital OOH displays in the future.

The programmatic workflows will lead to an overall improved buying process. We’re striving to make OOH as efficient as possible to plan, execute and report.

OOH has always embraced emerging industries. Even the most regulated industries leverage OOH to connect with consumers. For example, vaping brands and cannabis marketers are raising awareness with OOH.

We don’t continue to grow by sitting on our laurels. We’re not afraid of change. The OOH strides we make are benefits for marketers, everywhere.

Woot! Woot! (If you’ve read this far, I know you’re an OOH fan now.)

The benefits of OOH media are clear. OOH allows marketers to reach the right audiences effectively. To add OOH to your media plan, let’s get started.