This is how Programmatic out-of-home advertising works

Out-of-home advertising has undergone a transformation in the last few years. Many people still associate this publicity method with static billboards on the side of the highway, but today, programmatic digital out-of-home advertising (pDOOH) is taking over and allowing advertisers to run their campaigns in a more streamlined, data-driven way.

The word “programmatic” refers to the automated nature of the digital ad marketplace, which is one of the factors that has turned digital advertising into the gold standard in terms of precision and efficiency. Today, new platforms are taking cues from the internet and developing ways to make out-of-home advertising campaigns easier to manage, and with better results.

In this blog post, we’ll go over the basics of how the out-of-home advertising sector has adopted programmatic technology and how that change has transformed the experience of running out-of-home campaigns.

Demand-side platforms

If you’ve ever run online ad campaigns, you’re probably familiar with these automated systems for buying and managing digital ad inventory that we call demand-side platforms. These platforms help streamline processes by eliminating the need for advertisers to interact and negotiate directly with supply-side platforms.

In order to begin taking advantage of the new, programmatic world of out-of-home advertising, brands and agencies must first decide which demand-side platform they want to work with. The best of these platforms, including Beeyond, have intuitive interfaces and allow for the real-time tracking of campaign performance so that ads can be tweaked and optimized.

Ad targeting

Digital advertising has flourished largely in part to the access that advertisers have to detailed user data, allowing them to serve up the most customized and relevant ads. How, you might ask, could an out-of-home format that’s confined to a physical location ever hope to compete?

The answer is that pDOOH platforms are advancing in their ability to collect information, such as location data, from people who pass by the screens. But even more important is that, in the meantime, the modern field of out-of-home advertising makes an art out of doing the most with even basic demographic data.

Sometimes this optimization may mean only running a campaign during certain hours of the day or days of the week, in response to data about when the target audience is mostly likely to transit the area. In many cases, multiple screens in different locations can be used to capture different segments of the ideal audience.

Performance measurement

The beauty of pDOOH is that, similar to online advertising, you can use your chosen demand-side platform to visualize key performance metrics and adjust your campaigns at any time. The price you pay for an ad placement even depends on the number of impressions reached, an estimation made based on reliable transit data.

Any time you perceive an opportunity to optimize your campaign by modifying it, you have several options to do so: you can change the screens on which it runs, the time of day or day of week, or switch it out for different content that might resonate more with the audience.

Responding to external factors

As previously mentioned, demand-side pDOOH platforms work by dealing directly with the supply side and presenting all the information that an advertiser needs, such as performance metrics, in a simple platform. Another benefit of programmatic out-of-home advertising is that advertisers can also access information about external factors that influence ad performance.

For example, an ad for ice cream may perform well on a warm, sunny day; when it’s cloudy and a cool breeze blows, not so much. Before the emergence of programmatic out-of-home advertising, brands had to accept the unpredictability (and ROI losses) that those external factors bring. Now, companies can modify their ads in real time so that they’re always relevant.

The real-time contextual factors available on these platforms go beyond weather conditions. Advertisers can also find out the status of traffic, breaking news stories, and more. Many people have started to tune out advertising after being so bombarded by it, but when people see digital billboards that reference things that are going on around them, it tends to grab their attention.

Ad placement

Now that you have a better idea of how pDOOH works and what its advantages are, it’s worth listing some of the places that out-of-home advertising can be placed, so you can see how valuable it can be to have this kind of ad in your arsenal.

DOOH screens are often placed on urban furniture like bus stops, next to highways and main avenues, and at public transport hubs like the metro and in train stations. Other strategic locations include consumption points like malls, pharmacies and banks. Even universities and sports centers can be ideal places to advertise.

We hope this post has cleared up any questions you had about pDOOH and helped you understand why many in the advertising field are so excited about the continued development of this new technology.