By the editors of Media Life
July 10, 2014
Welcome to Media Life’s first open discussion on the future of out of home advertising. Over recent weeks, the magazine has recruited a panel of advisors, people working in the out of home industry, both buyers and sellers, to guide us as we expand our coverage of the medium. Our goal is to identify the key issues determining the future of the medium, and for that we turned to our panel for their insights. We posed two related questions: “What are the biggest challenges facing out of home as it competes with other media for a larger share of media budgets?” and “What does OOH need to do as an industry to overcome these challenges?” We received a slew of excellent responses, as you will see below. We’ve posted them pretty much in the order they came in. If you’d like to add your thoughts to the conversation, feel free to do so in the comment box below.
What are the biggest challenges facing out of home as it competes with other media for a larger share of media budgets?
OOH is strong and growing, but there is a disconnect between the business and the brand. Too many advertisers and agencies think of OOH as a non-core, secondary medium. Compared to other advertising, OOH is often planned ‘below the line.’ There are a number of perceptions that are holding OOH back. Job one is to address these perceptions, make improvements where needed, and reshape the conversation so that advertisers and agencies will think and act differently about OOH.
What does OOH need to do as an industry to overcome these challenges?
To overcome these challenges, the industry needs to center its future on innovation. Innovation is the most relevant and compelling promise that the OOH industry can make to advertisers and agencies. Innovation addresses current perceptions of OOH, and is a vision the entire OOH industry can rally around because it’s a ‘big tent’ idea that includes all forms of positive change happening in OOH, including:
· Ubiquitous, impactful, and contextually relevant OOH formats
· New digital technologies that allow the industry to react in real time
· Interactive convergence and smart device amplification
· High impact creative executions
· Increased measurability with OOH ratings
· Improved business practices that make the medium easier to buy
Innovation, in all these forms, is a promise that can motivate advertisers and agencies to think again, or even for the first time, about OOH. And, since a focus on innovation positions the industry for an increasingly digital future, it is built to last.
Nancy Fletcher
President & CEO
Outdoor Advertising Association of America
—–
What are the biggest challenges facing out of home as it competes with other media for a larger share of media budgets?
We need to deliver against other metrics than our own. The new media budgets seek more campaign specific and moment-to-moment ROI’s.
For example, we have real opportunity to integrate our OOH with mobile digital messaging yet we’ll need to value our medium against CPE’s and other similar factors to participate in those budgets.
What does OOH need to do as an industry to overcome these challenges?
Keep learning and seeking evolution. Our attitude should be that of the new kid on the block. We have the story: we’re visual, place-driven, constant and dynamic.
Our growth will be directly proportional to how much we are willing to shed the dogma of the past.
Rick Robinson
Chief Strategy Officer
billups Worldwide
—–
The biggest challenges facing this unique medium remain the same as always: PRESENTATION.
Whether it be the creative or the appearance of the structure itself, OOH needs to better present itself.
Unlike any other medium, OOH can’t be clicked away, turned off or tuned out. It is there in the “People’s Space,” generally uninvited. So if we are going to be there we need to be aware and respectful of that audience.
It will be incumbent upon the vendors, buyers and agencies to treat that solace with respect.
How do we do this?
More emphasis on the creative products. Whether it be the industry’s better acceptance of award shows or some sort of recognition and praise of great creative as a pillar of their existence or a better commitment to attractive and well-maintained structures, it has to start with the providers. I challenge senior management to end the lip service and begin the investment in caring for their own street presence.
Sean Robertson
Creative Director
Delta Media
—–
The main question is advertiser and ad agency education of the Digital OOH category.
My recommendation is that DPAA [Digital Place-Based Advertising Association] increase their budget to inform and educate the advertising industry on digital out-of-home.
Terence J. Kollman
President and CEO
Charter Digital Media Inc
—–
The greatest challenge for the outdoor industry continues to be addressed, and that is legitimizing the OOH currency (impressions) through education and a seat at the table.
With the new ratings, we have put the industry in a position where our story should be heard. The basis for the numbers results in reliable, usable data. Educating agencies is a major step in the battle for budget.
Matthew P. Leible
Chief Executive Officer
Generation Outdoor, Inc
—–
For me, and it may be different, but it’s changing perceptions.
Out of home has the cost-effective ability to deliver the equivalent of a mass broadcast audience and also engage with them on a really personal level, genuinely interact with them, and maybe give a reward at the end.
People always ask to do something no one’s ever done before, and those [types of campaigns] can be fun things to do, but we want to really deliver an accurate audience and minimize waste.
Mike Cooper
President
Rapport Worldwide
—–
I think for me the biggest hurdle is how do you translate an idea into something simple that works in outdoor?
There’s a lot of clutter in outdoor, and what generally tends to happen is if you don’t have a big idea, if you’re TV-led or execution-led, OOH becomes the matching luggage. And when that happens you might try to say too much because the original idea might be a TV idea. So then it doesn’t work. It works everywhere but OOH–you get that a lot.
Because of that, the landscape is cluttered. What would be beneficial is we need an idea that breaks through for OOH. Something where you see it and it becomes recognizable because of its iconic nature.
Matt Ian
Executive Creative Director
TBWA\Chiat\Day NY
—–
We face a couple of challenges:
The Internet
An increasing amount of our audience is using the internet to make their purchasing decisions before they leave the house. For an example, a family going on vacation will book their hotel rooms online and plan their meals using Yelp long before they drive by our billboards advertising local hotels and restaurants.
We can attempt to curtail this problem by continuing to innovate. There have been many attempts to make static billboards interactive, but none of them have really been successful. Also, we can also focus on making our local ads more “useful” by design ad that are compelling and attract more attention.
Local Creative
A lot of local ads are ugly. For example, a small business owner thinks incorrectly that the more information they put on a billboard, the more they will get out of it. The result is an unreadable mess.
This hurts the industry in a couple of ways. One, that small business owner who loaded up their ad with info is disappointed with the lack of business that it generates. The result is that they think OOH advertising doesn’t work and they don’t advertise with us again.
Two, ugly local advertising discourages advertising agencies from using OOH. Advertising agencies see themselves as professionals, and why would they want to put their clients up on a medium that features such amateurish attempts at advertising?
We can resolve this by educating our clients. We know what will work on in OOH and what will not. We are the professionals, and we need to help our clients create ads that will generate business.
Mike Parsons
National Creative Director
Fairway Outdoor
—–
In my opinion, one of the biggest issues in OOH advertising continues to be the quality of the work. Instead of being treated as media with the potential to entertain every bit as much as video or digital, OOH advertising is too frequently relegated to a giant product shot, logo and a pun.
Equally problematic, OOH advertising can end up as communication where the medium is asked to perform outside of its capacity–i.e. deliver too much information or overly-complex messaging. In both instances the net result is media underperformance. There are any number of reasons OOH advertising underperforms, but one of the main reasons is a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of OOH communication in the marketing mix.
Quite simply, the medium is being asked to do a job it was never intended to do and examples can be found on the side of any road in the world.
Brian Shembeda
Senior Vice President, Creative Director
Leo Burnett USA
—–
Measurement challenges.
There are products, markets and companies using outdated measurement methods, for example DECs [daily effective circulation]. There has been some progress in the transit space, but much more is needed.
Outdoor ratings have no doubt made the outdoor category more competitive with other channels; however it is not widespread and not consistently used within a market.
Our partners who don’t use outdoor ratings say it is because the cost is prohibitive.
Kelli Sumwalt
Vice President of Media
Laughlin Constable
—–
What are the biggest challenges facing out of home as it competes with other media for a larger share of media budgets?
Depending on the OOH media space being utilized – OOH is not a flexible media. For static units, most contracts are for a four-week period, there is a five-day posting window and the cost for producing the materials sometimes has to be covered by the media budget (unlike other media spaces).
It can also be hard to move flight dates if business needs change and the cancellation window is much longer than other media. These processes do not allow for the flexibility and optimization that other media does. Digital OOH (traditional and place-based) can solve some of these pains – but digital OOH media is not always available in the geography that is required to meet advertiser needs.
There is so much fragmentation in the media market, and clients’ budgets are not necessarily increasing. Advertisers and their marketing departments are under increased pressure to prove out ROI. In order for OOH to hold onto the current OOH media share and possibly grow it, we need to prove that the media is working.
While the measurement change was a great step forward, we now need to be looking at how to prove that a consumer exposed to an OOH ad acted on it.
What does OOH need to do as an industry to overcome these challenges?
As a geography-based media, static OOH media will always have less flexibility than other media spaces. The challenge to the vendors is to improve charting technology, allowing planners/buyers to view real-time availability.
This would allow buyers to more quickly and accurately piece campaigns together, view possible alternative boards if flight dates changed and current boards are unavailable and move board locations for future flights if the current board is not meeting advertiser needs, since depending of the city you’re travelling is more difficult to find flights, for example visiting a country like Panama from Costa Rica, is good to check flights from sites as https://www.aerobell.com/flights-from-san-jose-to-bocas-del-toro-panama/ that have the best options for this.
Partnering with mobile companies and integrating mobile elements into OOH plans may be the solution to proving out ROI. There are simple and more complex ways to do this. If partnered with a mobile vendor, board locations can be shared and the mobile vendor can track if their audience has driven past the board, serve up an additional mobile message and follow that consumer through their purchase path.
Programmatic companies are also touting their ability to serve ads based on audience factors in the digital place-based environment and also follow their audience through the purchase path. Both of these examples show that there is the possibility to prove out OOH ROI, and planners and buyers need to start incorporating these type of metrics into their campaigns to keep their current OOH budget and possibly grow it.
Gretchen Reisner
Senior Specialist, Out Of Home
Empower MediaMarketing
—–
What are the biggest challenges facing out of home as it competes with other media for a larger share of media budgets?
To a large degree the planning and buying community still sees OOH as an afterthought medium.
Reps need to step out of their comfort zone and change perceptions about what the medium is capable of. They need to ask to have a seat at the table and prove that they are worthy to be in the initial consideration set as budgets are determined. The industry needs to press forward on speaking in terms of audience and not just location, as very few agencies currently think of OOH as an audience-based medium. If any particular vendor in a market is resisting the change, it will hold back the whole market and the industry as well.
What does OOH need to do as an industry to overcome these challenges?
If the industry does not change the mindset of what it deserves and is willing to fight for, the buying community won’t either.
Reps need to be willing to have tough conversations in order to change perceptions. Don’t be afraid to ask for a bigger share of the budget and be confident in what you are asking for. Be bold and directly ask for a broadcast RFP or the chance to steal share from another medium. Embrace ratings and be confident in telling the story that all of the new metrics allow you to tell. Be creative, be aggressive and be a resource for your clients and agencies. Do your research and craft a story about why a client or agency needs to consider your products for their campaign.
Laura Hinrichsen
Associate Media Director
Jacobson Rost
(former marketing manager at Clear Channel Outdoor)
—–
What are the biggest challenges facing out of home as it competes with other media for a larger share of media budgets?
Providing results in a measured ROI are difficult with any mass medium, but it’s even more difficult for OOH. It’s often used as an ancillary and branding mechanism rather than a standalone traffic driver, and traditional tools to measure ROI and ad effectiveness don’t often measure well on OOH.
Additionally, the industry seems difficult to buy. Within each market there are different companies selling different inventory in different ways. It’s not as easy as buying prime-time network, cable demographics or back-page newspaper.
And thirdly, content creation has been lacking.
In a digital world of infographics and web videos, the majority of OOH art design is still stuck in the ’50s mold of “logo, tagline and product or stock photo” — and that is actually better than many billboards, which are too copy heavy and poorly constructed.
What does OOH need to do as an industry to overcome these challenges?
Identify a metric to measure OOH effectiveness after the buy.
Traditional medias spend their energy promoting to the buyer’s needs, capable of delivering an accurate number of opportunities for impressions. But no energy is spent by the medias post-buy in measuring ad recall and effectiveness.
Those duties have historically fallen to the agencies and their endless focus groups. Meanwhile, digital internet advertising has come in and offered not only pre-buy measurables but post-buy measurements that can be tied directly to sales, which is why advertisers spend money in the first place.
If a survey company can measure what people are watching on TV and listening to on the radio, they can also measure what OOH ads have resonated and gotten “viewership” at the local level as well.
While that number wouldn’t be directly tied to a sale, it’s a measure of an actual impression and will make both agency and media more committed.
And now that weekly impression numbers exist, it’s up to agencies to buy in. Closing that disconnect gap between how agencies bought before and buy now needs to have continued focus if OOH wants to make any real dent into their ad share.
Better creative wouldn’t be far behind if ad share increased, but until then, OOH companies aren’t helping by continuing to post bad creative.
Kurt Recker
Account Executive
Lamar Advertising Co. of Toledo
—–
What are the biggest challenges facing out of home as it competes with other media for a larger share of media budgets?
The OOH industry faces a big challenge convincing agencies to compare OOH on the same planning platform with other media. If planners stop discounting OOH ratings and impressions provided, and make an equal comparison with other media, planners and clients would find out how efficient OOH is in terms of reaching their target audience such as CPM, CPP, R&F and overall impressions against their target demo. If they believe and trust the numbers, OOH will receive a larger share of media budgets.
What does OOH need to do as an industry to overcome these challenges?
Besides getting planners to listen, understand and ask good questions, our industry leaders need to continue to make a strong effort to educate both planners and advertisers to understand and believe the rating and other campaign delivery numbers. If planners are convinced and recommend OOH, I feel confident that our medium will grow.
Mario R. Martinez
Lamar Advertising National Sales
—–
What are the biggest challenges facing out of home as it competes with other media for a larger share of media budgets?
1) Understanding the ROI of out-of-home.
Mobile is so alluring right now, particularly since it’s so close to the “moments of truth” and easily provides interactive content to shoppers. How can OOH provide similar/unique benefits to marketers?
2) Understanding when OOH’s various ad formats are most appropriate; related to this is need to understand how these different formats can work well together
What does OOH need to do as an industry to overcome these challenges?
Need to provide research as OOH’s proof points for the two challenges I describe above.
Beth Uyenco
Advisory Board Member
comScore
(Former Senior Vice-President for International Research at comScore)
http://www.medialifemagazine.com/on-the-challenges-facing-out-of-home/
