Storytelling and measurability: Why creatives are embracing digital out of home

In the bustling streets of cities worldwide, turning heads and raising people’s eyes, digital out of home (DOOH) advertising has quickly become a renewed canvas for brands. 

In the last several years in New York, static billboards on the MTA have transformed into digital screens, digital billboards in front of arenas have displayed dynamic ads before and after championship games and agencies specializing in DOOH have seen demand grow. 

According to data from PQ Media’s 2023 global digital out of home forecast, ad spending in the DOOH advertising market rebounded in 2021 and 2022. It regained its pre-pandemic share of total outdoor ad dollars at 31.4% in 2023, according to Insider Intelligence. 

While not the largest media channel in advertising, Kevin Bartanian, founder and CEO at out of home media owner Kevani, said there are several reasons why advertisers are back on the hunt for billboards.

To start, it hasn’t been long since emergency protocols were suspended nationwide after the pandemic, and people started to go back outside, he said.

Back-to-office mandates, back-to-normal public events and the return of concerts, sports, travel and more have led people back outdoors, allowing advertisers to again capitalize on public spaces. 

The dynamic nature of DOOH ads, which allow advertisers to bring short-form videos and motion pictures to the outdoors and change assets quickly, also adds to the appeal. Connected screens enable brands to not only distribute and swap creative quickly, but also to broadcast it across several locations at once, while offering more precise targeting and measurement.  

Here’s how DOOH is opening up a new canvas for advertisers — and what they should know about the space before diving in. 

A larger canvas for creativity 

DOOH advertising is not particularly new, with the first digital billboards installed back in 2005. 

But as digital screens have evolved over the years, DOOH opportunities have become more intriguing, from 3D billboards to screens that react to their environment in real time. 

Earlier this month, for instance, some brands refrained from airing Super Bowl ads to instead shell out millions of dollars to take over the Las Vegas Sphere, a giant, cylindrical LED screen covering a new entertainment venue. 

Nike, for example, promoted the new Air Max Dn, its first major redesign of Nike Air bubbles since the 1970s, with an augmented reality experience on the Sphere that resembled a giant quarter machine. 

Tourists in Las Vegas visiting for the Super Bowl could watch the sneaker levitate among toy-filled bubble capsules. The campaign, which ran from Feb. 9 to Feb. 12, aimed to create excitement about the sneaker’s release on March 26. 

Similarly, Budweiser teased its Big Game spot with a digital Sphere ad that showed its iconic Clydesdales trekking through the snow to deliver Bud in what resembled a snow globe. 

Even minimalistic DOOH ads are becoming more interactive as brands tie billboards to the digital world through QR codes and other features.

Mohamed Diaa, group creative director at Ogilvy, said Samsung’s recent Tiny Type campaign, which aimed to showcase the zoom power on its S23 Ultra cell phone camera, could only be pulled off through DOOH, for instance. 

The campaign, which launched in January, took a playful approach by capturing people’s attention through billboards that resembled eye test charts. Consumers in New York, London, Tokyo and more were invited to stop and look carefully at what seemed like tiny, unreadable messages — unless they zoomed in with an S23 Ultra. 

The initiative was inspired by concertgoers who used the phone to turn their nosebleed seats into front-row seats using the camera’s zoom function. 

“The easy thing for us to do would have been to just do another video [of people using the camera], throw it on TikTok and Instagram and say that we're part of this conversation. But we knew that people would roll their eyes and be like, ‘alright, here's another brand trying too hard to be cool,’” Diaa said. 

The solution was to create something consumers could directly interact with, which tapping into DOOH allowed them to do. 

“It's so easy just to throw something in the world and be very passive about it, but to give people something that they can interact with the brand and make them feel part of it, that's where DOOH played a big part for us,” he continued. 

Moreover, it allowed the team to measure engagement in a much more accurate way than out of home has been measured in the past — through impressions on social posts of the billboard or engagement with a QR code, versus estimated foot traffic.

Challenges for growth

Despite the creative appeal, most brands have not made DOOH a significant investment in their media budget, Bartanian said, noting that other digital formats still make up the bulk of spend. 

Data from Insider Intelligence shows OOH accounts for slightly more than 2% of total U.S. ad spend. Meanwhile, of that amount, a 2023 GroupM study found DOOH’s $13 billion global market represents only 37% of all OOH spend.

That’s due in part to a few barriers. First, DOOH requires a sizeable upfront investment to cover high-tech and infrastructure costs.

And while DOOH offers opportunities for advertisers to be more targeted with their buys, using methods like location targeting to pinpoint where the audiences a brand wants to reach are likely to be in the outside world, advertisers must be aware of privacy concerns associated with these methods. 

“Brands want to build authentic relationships with their customers without violating their privacy,” Bartanian said.

While DOOH technology has improved, and programmatic infrastructure has made it more efficient, attribution and measurement solutions are still lacking. 

To start, advertisers want better ways to measure performance rather than just brand awareness metrics. 

Despite these challenges, U.S. DOOH ad spending is projected to grow by double digits annually through the end of 2027, according to Insider Intelligence.

“Out of home is leading a lot of the conversations [now] because of all the creativity around it, the impact of earned media, the social buzz that it creates and people sharing their experience with the brand,” Bartanian said. “It's in the real world. It's a physical connection between the brand and their audience in a physical space.”

Read the article on Campaign.