In the contextual ad battle, out-of-home beats broadcast every time
Contextual relevance is difficult to achieve when you can’t even be sure your audience is really there, explains Jack Mortlock, commercial director at Tonic Health Media.
The media industry continues to shout about the importance of contextual relevance when it comes to grabbing digital audiences. The funny thing is, agencies often overlook the opportunities presented for place-based out-of-home media to deliver the same engagement in physical environments.
Traditional media will always have a place on budgets, that’s not in contention. TV, radio and print are solid channels that work for broadcast and limited targeting, and agency spend with these channels will remain strong. What’s also not up for debate, is that these channels’ audiences are shallowing out, and fragmenting. The surety around when and where these channels will get consumed is diminishing. While they’ll always be great at building brands, their capacity to catch an audience in a predefined moment-in-time or context is not what it once was.
The issue is the legacy of routine when it comes to media channel spend. TV and radio alike still attract a certain percentage of dollars, arguably because ‘that’s the way it’s always been’, and just like digital and especially programmatic are giving the industry pause-for-thought about these practices, the same is happening with out-of-home.
Nice take Jack.