The Shocking Truth About Out-Of-Home

Gina Grillo, President & CEO

The ADVERTISING Club/International ANDY Awards

Next time you are out and about, look up, look around you.  The landscape is changing; literally and figuratively.  Some of you may be shocked to realize just how much out-of-home has permeated our daily lives.  Let me tell you more.

According to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA) Out-of-home (OOH) drives more online activity per ad dollar spent than any other traditional media.  OOH is 382% more effective than TV, 200% more effective than print, and 63% more effective than radio in driving consumers online.  Need more?  85% of all consumers believe OOH is useful, 83% believe it’s informative and 82% say it creates jobs and stimulates the economy.

The triumvirate of creative, data and technology are at the core of the out-of-home phenomenon driving growth, making OOH one of the fastest growing ad mediums.

Two out-of-home Gold Award winners from the 2016 International ANDY Awards are prime examples of creativity and technology combining to raise standards across the industry.

  • “Safety Truck” Leo Burnett Argentina for Samsung features “The Safety Truck”, equipped with a wireless camera, installed at the front of the vehicle. The camera captures real-time footage of the road and then wirelessly feeds it to four exterior Samsung screens on the truck’s rear wall. Making it safe for cars driving behind the truck to see what’s up ahead and make safe driving decisions.
  • “World Gallery” from TBWA\Media Arts Lab for Apple is just like an OOH art show, iPhone 6 billboards featured photos taken by actual iPhone users. Apple found photos it liked from 162 users from around the world and created outdoor boards of their work. In all, the campaign featured more than 10,000 installations in 73 cities in 25 countries. Apple called it “the largest mobile photography gallery in history.”

Out-of-home is reaching consumers all around the world. With work by British artist Mark Titchner, London’s Tube and rail network recently premiered the largest ever Tube advertising screens.  The screens support full motion video suspended from the ceiling in the ticket hall providing opportunity for advertisers to connect with more than one million people who pass through each week. A great example of creativity and technology fueled by data.

One of the reasons these advancements in out-of-home are possible is partially due to the fact that many cities are changing their positions on out-of-home, allowing more points of contact that enhance consumers’ outdoor experiences. Wi-Fi, charging stations, smart kiosks, and our own hometown contribution, the LinksNYC Beta kiosks that have popped up all over the city are able to deliver timely and pertinent messages through coordinated location data points.  All of these advancements are a requirement for today’s marketer.  It’s what consumers expect.

Sometimes, it’s what you don’t expect that catches your attention.  A few of the most advanced tech-based companies like Apple, Google and Snapchat are capturing the consumer’s attention in a simplistic way; becoming a part of the landscape in the most traditional way; through strategic use of billboards.  Apple’s 1984 television advertisement is no doubt iconic, but I’m certain you can still picture the powerful Apple billboards with graphic silhouettes of iPods in use.  Very powerful.

Advancements in data and technology continue to innovate transforming out-of-home’s way to reach the right audience at the right time and in the right place, it is a “must have” in the marketing equation.

The next time you are out; look around and see what surrounds you.  Understand that art + science is the advertising enabler. There’s no going back, the future is here.