Language of love
By Mike Gamaroff In many ways, there is a degree of security for out-of-home (OOH) media owners when it comes to the long-term sustainability of their businesses. While the channel suffers from dwindling spend in favor of more measurable digital alternatives, at the core of it, OOH media owners have a lengthy shelf life because of their rigid occupation of the physical realm. Mobile devices will move to the eyes (augmented reality, or AR), transforming the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard formats and all that goes with them. Television viewing habits will continue to constantly evolve. But still, there is little that stands in the way of a 48-foot billboard on the side of a highway, a widescreen TV above your cross-trainer at the gym or breaking news in the elevators of every major city. To be clear, this does not mean these OOH businesses can lie on their backs and wait for the checks to roll in – not at all. They still need to maximize their position in the media landscape and constantly evolve to stay relevant in a connected world. But the only real way for an OOH media owner to be seriously hurt in the long term is if they pursue costly innovation in the wrong places. So, what are the potential traps that OOH media owners are at risk of falling into on their journey towards the next big pivot? Traffic in people There is one that looms in plain sight but, in many cases, is being ignored: that is the industry-wide shift to buying audiences instead of specific locations. There was a time when, if you wanted to buy OOH media in a city, you could select media owners who occupied specific places or venue types that you felt matched your desired audience: business people in office buildings or vehicle owners at gas stations, for example. Not anymore. Big Data now shows us where specific people are in the real world and the implications are significant because it affects all aspects of planning, buying, serving and measuring OOH media – effectively changing the way it has been traded for several decades. In the race to adopt mobile data and programmatic principles in the OOH space, many media owners have invested heavily in building just what the industry has been begging for, but with the one glaring limitation: it is only applicable to their own inventory. And, in the population centers, even the largest and most prolific OOH media owner makes up only a portion of the assets that are available in a specific target area. Buyers do want automation, platforms and programmatic in the OOH space. But the rapid shift to choosing placements that are informed by big geolocation data, at scale, means that tools are needed to encompass all available media owners who are present in specific types of locations – not just one or two.
Tiffany billboard below an overpass
Mike Gamaroff is senior vice president of channel strategy at SITO Mobile