By Leslie Lee, SVP of Marketing, Vistar Media

“Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.”

This observation from Thomas Edison holds true in much of life – and points out that opportunity alone is not enough to succeed. There is an array of opportunities in marketing today – new media formats, new targeting capabilities, new platforms – but without sufficient planning, advertisers and agencies alike may miss on the full value that’s there for the taking.

Actually – maybe it’s not accurate to say there isn’t sufficient planning. Rather, there is a disconnect between creative and media strategy planning, resulting in campaigns that don’t fully capitalize on the benefits of both sides of the creative-media equation.

It comes back to basic principles of understanding the method of delivery. All creative briefs are built around matching the right message and visual imagery with the right medium. Which images & colors will catch the eye, what conversational tone feels appropriate, the focus on action vs. brand recall, the relationship with surrounding content – depending on the media format, all of these are very obviously impacted. These are table stakes considerations for creative teams. Over the years, that list of table stakes has gotten longer, to include the technical capabilities of different ad formats.

Imagine planning a digital brand activation without knowing that online ads can be interactive and clickable. Or creating an audio-only campaign without considering that it will be run not only on broadcast radio but also via 1:1 digital audio formats on Spotify and your favorite podcast apps. The campaigns might be beautiful and interesting but they might miss out on opportunities to make the ads even more relevant, engaging and impactful.

In standard digital formats, that just wouldn’t happen today. But when it comes to digital out-of-home (DOOH), this is exactly the situation in place across many campaigns.

A dramatically changed format

Out-of-home (OOH) is the oldest form of advertising and has been around for centuries. Digital out-of-home (DOOH) emerged widely in the early 2000s, but has seen rapid growth in recent years thanks to the influx of programmatic tech and data-driven capabilities. According to research from IMARC Group, the global DOOH advertising market reached US $16.9 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow to $35.7 billion by 2028.

Partially this is thanks to media owners investing in digitizing their assets and as a result the number of ad units has grown tremendously in a short timeframe. But it’s not just the scale of the format that has transformed – DOOH today is a nimble, fast-acting channel that can target the right message to the right audience at the right time.

As with any new technological advancement, there is a learning curve and it takes a little time to understand all of the newfound capabilities.

Because some marketers don’t fully understand all of the capabilities of DOOH, the channel is often forgotten or deprioritized during the planning stages of a campaign. Since many still view OOH as static signage sitting along the highway or in a subway station, they retrofit existing creative to fit the sign. While that approach may work in many cases, marketers are doing themselves a disservice and coming short of the campaign’s true potential.

Unlock the True Potential of Creative

I’m certainly not trying to say that creative teams aren’t up to speed on what is available in the market. Creatives are often aware of the most cutting-edge technologies and are hungry to bring ideas to life in new ways. But if the media format isn’t even on the table in the early stages of campaign planning, creative teams may not develop ideas that account for the full scope of capabilities.

Let’s say a grocery chain wants to showcase the high quality of their fresh items and appeal to cost-conscious, urban consumers. A campaign planned specifically for programmatic OOH has a lot of ways to bring this to life. For example, running a dynamic creative campaign that features a different hero product relevant to the time of day – fruit at breakfast time, proteins in the evening – paired with the location of the store nearest to where the ad is shown and the specific discount offer for that store – designed with bold colors to stand out in an urban landscape and subtle animation to grab the attention of people walking down the street.

This is a highly compelling, attention-grabbing approach that takes full advantage of the capabilities of the channel. It would be hard, however, to bring this to life in the final stages of media planning trying to repurpose existing banner ads and assets from other channels.

From specific weather triggers to niche audience targeting to mobile media re-engagement to dynamic creative, there are many opportunities to bring campaigns to the next level and stand out from the noisy advertising crowd, by bringing programmatic OOH into the consideration set earlier in the campaign planning cycle.

Creative Extension into DOOH

On the flip side, there are also scenarios where campaigns may be missing out on the full opportunity to apply their planning.

Since DOOH is such a versatile medium, creative teams can easily repurpose existing creative to fit today’s modern and eye-catching digital displays. For example, if you have a beautiful campaign with a video asset, that video can also run on some of the biggest, most unique digital screens in varying environments. There are interactive DOOH screens that offer a 1:1 viewing environment – for example, tablets inside of rideshare vehicles – that should be considered as an extension for mobile-first strategies.

Similarly, many brands today run campaigns with unique ad creatives and messaging suited to the specific recipient – think featuring different music genres, influencer profiles and taglines depending on whose social feed the ad is running in. Thanks to the precision targeting available in DOOH, brands can apply the same audience segmentation to deliver unique ad messaging to those groups in the physical world.

Giving DOOH a Seat at the Creative Table

One thing is certain: OOH and DOOH have a lot to offer marketers but the impact can be significantly amplified by unifying the creative and media strategy planning processes.

The format itself can force a distillation of an idea that longer, narrative-driven formats like TV or online video might not. In a study conducted by Advertiser Perceptions and Vistar Media, several successful media planners, strategists and creatives were asked, “in what stage of the planning process is DOOH considered for inclusion?” One art director responded, “I definitely say (DOOH) is one of the first things that you consider. We really want to make that message poignant and sharp and short and sweet and then build it out to other tactics from there.”

When done right, DOOH can be a very effective and efficient medium. According to Kantar’s Media Reaction 2022 report, both consumers and marketers placed DOOH ads in the top 5 ranking of media channels for positivity, preference and ad equity.

Effective planning early on in the creative process will help marketers take full advantage of the channel’s opportunities to come to life in the real world with all the engaging capabilities of digital. As a marketer, that sounds like some good fortune to me.