OOH:NOW Q&A: Elyssa Gray, Director, Head of Brand and Advertising, NA Cards, Citi

With our 8th Annual OOH:NOW Conference less than two days away, we wanted to ask our Brand Keynote speaker Elyssa Gray, Director, Head of Brand and Advertising, NA Cards, Citi on what she thinks about the state of OOH today and where it will be in the coming year. Let’s see what she has to say…

Are there any trends for the new year, by way of digital tech in OOH, that we should look out for?

Mobile will certainly play an increasingly important role in how we think about OOH. Brands will look to further leveraging technology to connect with consumers. Thinking about how we approach creative will be a focus as well. Being able to serve digital OOH messaging in a highly relevant way, at a highly relevant time will become more pervasive. Tactically, this can extend to optimizing consumer engagements through retargeting and sequential messaging strategies. Ultimately digital ad tech will also help us get closer to understanding attribution and ROI for OOH.

What needs to happen for OOH to align with the overall digital landscape? And with other media? 

Consistent measurement and tracking is critical if there is to be stronger cross channel alignment, especially with digital. The TAB audience data/ratings need to be more broadly adopted across all buyers, seller and advertisers. OOH has long been sold as a real-estate play – we need to shift the focus to fully leveraging audience data as a common currency if OOH wants to align with other media. That said, there will still be challenges understanding the action taken or brand impact that someone has s after being exposed to specific OOH placements or creative, which quite frankly remains a struggle for traditional media overall.

How are technology partners being used to better serve content and provide greater creative optimization? 

There are some interesting ways data and technology partners are working with brands to create more contextual engagements. Many OOH placements now enable messages to be tailored or triggered by different data variables such as temperature change, pollen count, stock market fluctuation, top trending online searches, etc. When you layer insights from new data sources on top of this and you create a powerful, targeted channel to drive traffic, influence purchase behavior or change brand perception.

How do marketers make the most of OOH media? Is there a perfect storm of events/issues/circumstances when OOH is most effective?

I believe history has proven that the role of OOH is quite diverse and can be utilized to achieve any number of goals. OOH can be a strong medium for reminding consumers of your brand and key benefits. All communications, including OOH, are most effective when you thoughtfully connect with a consumer, at the right time, with the right message, in the right place. OOH has that unique benefit of location. When that location is in a specific i.e., an airport, a mall cinema and even a bike sharing rack, you can use the insight of what the consumer might be doing at that time, and customize your message accordingly. At the end of the day, your message should be additive to the consumer’s life, otherwise you run the risk of being wallpaper.

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Our OOH:NOW Conference is less than two days away on December 2nd – join us and register here today!