Beyond digitisation: How measurement and attribution is driving out of home media
While out of home is making transformative moves in digitisation, innovation in measurement and attribution is also propelling the sector forward, writes oOh!media CEO Cathy O'Connor.
The past 12 months in out of home (OOH) have been exceptional. Across the sector we have consistently outpaced other traditional media channels when it comes to ad spend, with revenues hitting $1.2 billion, and that number is expected to grow significantly in 2024.
Digitisation has been the game changer driving OOH growth, combined with a broader media market that is increasingly fragmented to that of our own, which remains an aggregator of audiences.
While increased investment in converting and building new digital inventory – and all the opportunities it presents advertisers when it comes to creativity, impact and scale continues – there have been evolutionary changes quietly happening in measurement and attribution that have extended the desirability of OOH as a performance media channel.
Compared to television for instance, which looks set to operate in a market with two distinct buying currencies from next year, the OOH industry is unified and committed to further enhancing our world leading audience measurement system, MOVE.
In 2024 MOVE 2.0 will bring significant new audience metrics for agencies and advertisers, including regional audiences with over 100,000 signs measured across the country, place-based audience measurement across all formats, and audience data for 365 days a year, including seasonal fluctuations. Collectively, we are united and committed to ensuring advertising partners have the most robust audience data in place to drive return on the marketing spend.
Then OOH continues to make major advances in audience attribution – delivering deep insights into what drives sales and brand performance.
One of the questions that often gets asked of OOH companies by advertisers is “How do I know out of home advertising works?” For decades individual OOH operators have invested in proprietary research to prove our piece of the pie is worth growing, however until recently, the focus was on claimed awareness levels, rather than what happened during or after the campaign at the register, which begs the question – should a broadcast channel like OOH play a role when you’re looking to drive a sales outcome?
In 2018, we had a breakthrough, when market mix modelling demonstrated data points, leading us to explore four key principles of campaign success. The four ingredients were to maximise 1+ reach (reaching a target audience at least once), use a blend of formats (which drives efficiency in building that reach), utilise both classic and digital channels-increasing efficiency even further through physical availability. The final ingredient was the real ‘ah ha’ moment for us. Instead of directing efforts toward broad demographic graphics, we can focus on individuals who are actively making transactions within the specific product or service category.
Over the past five years oOh! has collaborated with Australia’s largest retailers and banks to develop sophisticated tools that map de-identified transaction data to our network. The sole objective is to refine the way we can help customers in planning their campaigns against the right inventory. It’s a simple but sophisticated approach – identifying the OOH locations that deliver the greatest number of category buyers, or ‘buyergraphics’ – representing the right audience for OOH advertising. We’ve made significant progress in understanding the campaign’s impact on what actually happens next, or even on the brand’s performance over time.
Through partnerships with Unpacked by Flybuys and Westpac DataX for example, oOh! now has a clear view of the outcomes from 12 million transacting customers every week. With the launch of oOh! outcomes, when an advertiser plans an OOH campaign across our 35,000-plus panel strong network, we can understand the impact. Whether it’s the uplift in buyers pre to post campaign, the proportion of new customers that have attracted, how brands have shifted within their category, or even the dynamics of price promotions before, during and after a campaign. These are rich insights previously unavailable to advertisers using OOH.
Cathy O’Connor
The planning opportunity for brands is enormous. With 800 buyergraphics mapped to our network of sites, advertisers and agencies can now choose whether to target current buyers, lapsing buyers, or even competitors’ customers. Combining that capability with the reporting functionality means advertisers and agencies can invest with confidence, as the art of OOH buying is now much more a science than ever before.
Over recent months through our oOh! Outcomes campaign reporting capability, we have collaborated with more than 40 brands, measuring their overall campaign performance across more than 20 metrics – both before, during, and after the campaigns. The results continously vaildate the significance impact of OOH advertising on sales, leading to not only spikes but also sustained, and in many cases, incremental sales beyond the campaign. On average, campaigns using our path-to-purchase formats, namely Street Furniture and Retail, saw an average sales uplift of 8.6% during the campaign. A notable example includes a leading cosmetics brand experiencing a 146.7% increase in sales during their campaign, while another FMCG brand observed a substantial 122.7% increase in sales compared to the pre campaign period.
While digitisation has rightly captured much of the OOH headlines, the concurrent focus on improving measurement and attribution taking place in the relative shadows has been instrumental in driving the desirability and effectiveness of OOH media. Ahead of continued growth in 2024, the alignment of digitisation with robust measurement and attribution tools positions OOH as a reliable option for advertisers seeking to drive returns on their marketing investment.
