Digital out-of-home advertising is a rapidly advancing industry as more marketers are realizing that digital billboards are more valuable than static ones. When digital billboards first came about, a static billboard image was converted into digital format and displayed as content on the digital billboard. Now however, DOOH can cater to content that directly responds with the audience.
So what has driven the DOOH market to expand to what it is today?
Better targeting
The emergence of effective digital targeting tools has helped advertisers identify their target market and thereby get an overall measurement of the effectiveness of their advertising campaign.
Digital advertising has become more mature and programmatic, thereby providing sophisticated opportunities to target your audience more closely. From demographics to location, a range of targeting options are under our control. With these features, businesses can get customers to engage based on their location, preferences, and points of interest and so on.
Audience-based insights are now always a part of the out-of-home advertising buying process. With familiar planning techniques from online marketing campaigns, advertisers can reach maximum audiences surrounding their outdoor advertising displays. With the availability of location based consumer insights, DOOH buying and selling is seeing a huge revolution.
Vibrant and energetic content
As a result of improved targeting, the digital signage content can also change based on audience demographics, feedback, social media feeds, weather conditions and other elements.
Vibrant and energetic content can be produced for the following uses:
- Providing various make up tips depending on current weather conditions.
- Coffee advertisements being enforced on consumers who seem to be tired.
- Displaying the best social media posts from customers.
Although dynamic content is exciting, managing it can also be very much complicated as compared to traditional advertising. Plenty of time is needed to handle various criteria and create the perfect relevant content.
Producing variety of content means there are more variables that have to be considered. Hence experts’ advice that marketers who are new to the department of dynamic content should avoid trying to do everything in one go. They should instead focus on a few new variables and restrict the campaign from getting too complex. This will make sure they are still in sight of what makes DOOH advertising effective – simplicity.
What should you consider when designing content for DOOH?
Whether you are launching a digital or traditional outdoor advertising campaign, selecting the right content is difficult. You need to carefully consider what type of content should be used, how to loop the content, and how often to play the loop.
There are two important factors to keep in mind when designing content for a DOOH campaign.
Dwell time
A digital display will be effective if end users know exactly how long a viewer or potential customer will keep dwelling or paying attention to the screen. Time, place and intent are 3 important things to keep in mind when creating content. For example, a digital billboard on a highway will have very little dwell time whereas an indoor display in a hospital will have a high dwell time. Marketers should also consider the fact that viewers of the digital sign are driving by it, walking by or standing by it. The answer to this is also critical in the designing of content.
Transience
Another factor for content design consideration is how transient your audience is. Will they be visiting the same place in the building often? Or will they just pass by your digital display once? The answer to this will determine how often your content should be refreshed. For example, a highway billboard or an airport has a high audience transience; so it doesn’t make sense to refresh content regularly. In an educational institute however, the audience is rather fixed – same students and staff regularly walking around the premises. Digital displays in this context need to be updated with fresh content very often.
Compilation
After you have figured out the level of dwell time and audience transience, you are ready to begin designing digital content. In doing so, be sure to understand the position and mindset of your audience. Once that is done, content creation will become easy.
