What is Out-of-Home (OOH) Advertising?
How tired are you of seeing ads everywhere these days? Pretty tired, right? The reality of this constant overload shows up on our phones, our TVs, in the paper, and on the radio. But, as we venture into the “wild” of our communities, we find another method of advertising, which is unlike the rest. Welcome to the world of out-of-home advertising.
Out-of-home advertising refers to any type of advertising or marketing collateral found in public spaces. Think billboards, bus wraps, van wraps, subway advertising, taxi & Uber advertising — the list goes on. These methods of advertising, while seemingly overwhelming, help advertisers reach the masses. Seriously, if you exist in a city or metropolitan area, you have seen out-of-home advertising in action.
As we dive into the nuance of out-of-home advertising, we’ll cover what it is used for, its cost-effectiveness, and how this medium can offer unique solutions for your business. We’ll also end with some DDL examples because, duh. Get ready to learn, but fret not; there is no post-blog quiz (unless you’d like us to gamify our content, then let us know in the comments).
Why is Out-of-Home Advertising important?
Point blank: Out-of-home advertising is shown to have the most effective brand recall of all marketing and advertising methods. Brand recall is marketing speak for memory. We are asking, “how likely are you to remember this brand?”
According to a Solomon Partners Study, 86% of respondents attributed remembering a brand’s message to an out-of-home advertising event.
Such favorable recall motivated direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands to spend more on OOH in 2021. A Statista study noticed that those who view billboards or OOH marketing are 35% more likely to visit a brand’s website.
This data is extremely positive… but what does it mean to the business owner? Simply, it tells business owners that out-of-home advertising causes audiences to act. Action is the first step in getting a customer into your sales funnels and interested in your brand.
Well, that seems obvious, but what makes it stand out aside from its efficacy? Don’t worry we’ve got that answer too.
Out-of-Home Advertising is Cost Effective
Seasoned marketers spare no expense when it comes to finding the best CPM (cost per thousand) rate for a host of marketing tactics. While these can fluctuate from service to seasonality, CPMs can run anywhere from $12.00 to $40.00 (that’s up to 40 dollars for 1,000 impressions). That seems a little steep, doesn’t it?
*Enter out-of-home advertising.*
Enter out-of-Home Advertising. DDL works with Lamar, one of the largest OOH vendors in the Providence market, to place billboards and other OOH activations around the I-95 and I-195 corridors. To truly understand the cost efficiency of OOH marketing, lets break down an example billboard from our client, Rhode Island College.
RIC loves billboards, and here’s why:
The billboard displayed below is currently running along 95S towards Cranston. It’s considered a prominent placement in Rhode Island and costs about $8,000 for a four-week flight. Lamar’s data indicates that a billboard like this gets an estimated average of 400,000 weekly impressions! That is roughly 1.6 million impressions during the entire flight.
Doing some quick math, 8k divided by 1.6M is $.005. Less than a cent per impression, are you kidding me?!
Reaching that many eyeballs for less than $10,000 is out-of-this-world cost-effective. Add in the benefits of brand recall and increased chances of organic search, and it’s clear that out-of-home advertising works. But the question still lingers: why is it so compelling?
How is Out-of-Home Advertising Effective?
To explain why out-of-home advertising is effective, let’s return to the concept of “in the wild.” When we leave our homes and travel to work, the beach, or wherever else we are going, we generally are doing so with intention. We are “going” somewhere with a purpose – to do our job or get a tan, etc.
Seeing these messages as we travel is something we did not pre-plan or have any awareness of. For that reason, when we experience out-of-home advertising, it resonates in a deeper way as we (the viewer) did not already “expect to see an ad.”
To illustrate this concept, think of Gen Z. They were raised at an ad-first age. So much so that they can recognize promotional content from organic content and shut it off immediately. They are so used to being exposed to ads, that they use online ad blockers more than any other demographic. They are braced for ads on YouTube or Instagram in a way older demographics are not because Gen Z has never known a world without smartphones.
If you’re over 30, you can remember when smartphones became “a thing” and how new and exciting they were. This, albeit small, dopamine rush of something new is captivating, prompting you to remember it more fondly. That sense of “aw, hey, that’s cool” is felt when looking at billboards or out-of-home advertising because you “didn’t already expect it to be there,” like Gen Z does with digital ads.
The other component is the creativity that billboards offer. They are mainly static and genuinely massive. With a canvas that size, creativity can run wild. One of the most successful uses of out-of-home advertising was the Altered Carbon bus shelters created to promote the Netflix show of the same name.
The shelters featured what appeared to be cryogenically frozen bodies that would come to life as people drew closer.
DDL’s Examples of Out-of-Home Advertising
Okay, so we know why OOH is important, we’ve grasped cost efficiency, and we also talked about why OOH activates unlike other tactics. Now, let’s look at some Kick-ass DDL examples of OOH Advertising.
RIDEM
The Rhode Island Department of Environment Management contacted DDL, asking to revive their local seafood campaign. Our team got to work and found a trove of incredible photography. The creative our team put together consisted of three buckets:
- The faces of RI Seafood pay tribute to the hard workers.
- The 80+ spaces and places where you can support local markets and restaurants selling RI Seafood.
- The “From our state to your plate” initiative further backs that our seafood is sourced right from the state of RI.
PVDFest
PVDFest is a big deal. It is Providence’s biggest festival to celebrate the art, culture and businesses of Rhode Island.Needless to say, we took care to design bus wraps for the RIPTA buses that would stand out but also provide important, timely information about the festival.
Nexterra
We’ll start this one with a question. When faced with the chaos of who to use when confronted with vehicle damage, are you going with a high-quality company with a fleet of wrapped Sprinter vans with brand logos and contact info? Or are you picking the conspicuous unmarked van with no information on it? We know what we’d choose, and that’s exactly what we provided to Nexterra with these commercial vehicle wraps.
The Takeaway
More than just another marketing tactic, out-of-home Advertising has the power to leave a lasting impact on its viewers. Its success rates also look good for the bottom line. If you’re looking to learn even more about OOH or want to get started on a campaign, get in touch, and we’ll get sh*t done.
Stacey Liakos
Boss Lady
