Background

Although marketers spend billions of dollars on OOH advertising every year (Guttmann, 2020), academic researchers have largely neglected recent changes in the OOH industry (Fortenberry and McGoldrick, 2020). These include the introduction of digital OOH formats that expand their ability to target, with options ranging from broad/mass market reach to targeting narrow/specific markets and new audience measures (Billboards Australia, 2019, JCDecaux, 2018). In the absence of independent academic research, marketers make media decisions based on their own perceptions and experiences, or the experiences of others in the field.

We set out to understand how OOH decisions are made and quantify the perceived value of different OOH formats.

Research Questions

This research aimed to answer two key questions:

1. What are the reasons underlying the use of OOH advertising and its varying formats?
2. What execution tactics contribute to the success of OOH advertising and its varying formats?

We devised a survey to gather data from media decision makers. The survey questions were informed by three preliminary studies. First, we analysed over 400 real-world case studies in which OOH advertising was used, from the World Advertising Research Centre (WARC) (www.warc.com), to identify advances, changes, and trends that have emerged in the industry recently. Services reported the highest incidence of using OOH (31% of all case studies), followed by consumer packaged goods (22%), shopping/speciality (20%), charity/not-for-profit (16%) and durables (10%). Table 1 lists the campaign objectives, as these were classified in WARC’s database. Awareness and sales growth topped the list of OOH advertising objectives in these case studies.

Table 1: OOH advertising objectives from 400 case studies

Second, we conducted in-depth, exploratory interviews with relevant OOH industry experts. Finally, we included questions from key academic studies of businesses’ reasons for using traditional OOH advertising (eg. Taylor et al., 2006), to test whether perceptions have changed with the rise of new digital OOH formats.

In our main study we surveyed 118 media practitioners from around the world. Tables 2 and 3 show results from this survey. Table 2 compares the use of OOH to other media types. OOH was the third most used medium but had the second-highest share of advertising spend.

Table 2: Use of different media formats and their proportion of spending

Table 3 outlines the use of different OOH formats and how much money is spent on them. Roadside billboards were used the most and got the highest share of the advertising budget.

Table 3: Use of different OOH formats and their proportion of spending

Why do practitioners use OOH advertising and different formats?

There were four key findings related to our first research question:

Key Finding 1: Advertisers use OOH advertising because of its high visibility. Nearly two thirds of respondents (65%) associated OOH with high visibility, which explains why it is used to achieve awareness and sales growth. Only television had more respondents associate it with visibility (77%). OOH is not perceived to provide a tangible response. Whereas mediums that embed digital metrics (online search optimisation, social media and online display) were linked with the objective of achieving a tangible response.

Key Finding 2: Different OOH formats achieve different benefits. This means marketers should have specific requirements in mind when choosing different OOH formats. Roadside billboards were most associated with achieving high visibility, while place-based advertising (i.e., at gyms and malls) was the format most associated with achieving a local presence (70%), followed by bus shelters (54%) and street furniture (53%). Because place-based advertising can elicit a response more easily measured (i.e., more traffic into store), it is better than other OOH formats for immediate sales.

Key Finding 3: OOH is not used because it is perceived as high cost and low reach. A concern for the OOH industry is that OOH was seen as less efficient than other media. In addition, there was a perceived lack of proven effectiveness. This suggests the OOH industry should invest in efforts to demonstrate that OOH is worth including in a brand’s media mix.

Key Finding 4: Digital and traditional OOH advertisements are perceived as largely the same. There was only one perceived difference; digital OOH was associated more with providing a tangible response. This perception may be due to interaction data (e.g., metrics capturing eyes on screen/looking) being readily available for digital OOH advertising but harder to capture for traditional road-side formats. It is an important difference that increases the value of OOH.

The fifth key finding related to our second research question:

What execution tactics contribute to OOH advertising success?

Key Finding 5: The most important execution tactic for OOH advertising is brand name identification. Advertisers should ensure their OOH advertising uses strong direct branding, so viewers can easily identify which brand the ad is for. Because OOH ads are viewed for very short times (apart from subway ads), conveying large amounts of information was not considered important. Practitioners should focus on clearly displaying the brand name and including strong, relevant, and clear branding visuals. Tactics were perceived as equally important across all OOH formats, including digital OOH.

Summary

These key findings highlight points to consider when using OOH advertising whether advertising buyers or media sellers:

• OOH advertising is highly visible at specific locations, but for these reasons some national advertisers perceive it as high cost for its reach level.
• The OOH industry needs to provide more evidence-based research to back its claim of being one of the most effective offline mediums (Billboards Australia, 2021, Mawditt, 2019, Bacon, 2016).
• Currently, digital and traditional OOH advertising are perceived as largely similar. The OOH industry needs to explain how digital OOH advertising can achieve advertisers’ different objectives and provide greater evidence of digital advertising’s effectiveness.
• Use the high visibility of OOH advertising to increase mental availability for the brand among prospective customers, as well as increase the brand’s purchase availability by indicating where the it can be found. Marketers should consider their specific brand and campaign objectives when deciding whether to use OOH advertising and choosing which OOH format fits best with those objectives.
• Because the exposures are nearly always fleeting, media decision-makers must apply best-practice branding principles when using OOH advertising. Exposures to OOH advertisements are fleeting, so these ads must have clear branding that is easily identifiable, i.e. the creative may play a greater role in OOH than other formats. To be effective ad creative must be simple, with one key message and few words.

This report adds to the existing research from the Institute investigating ‘What is a spot worth’. Report 82: How advertisers rate media buys: Developing rules of thumb to guide media selection is an earlier report from this research area and recommended reading, with Report 96: Does the Radio Audience shrink during the Ad break also assisting media-mix decisions.

Other related reports are:

Report 66: Ehrenberg-Bass Institute Key Media Principles,

Report 108: What is known about attention (to advertising) and

Report 57: A Guide to Continuous-Reach Advertising.