What Are the Benefits of Programmatic DOOH Advertising for Your Brands?

Digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising is the fastest growing marketing technique for engaging with audiences in public spaces. By leveraging digital screen networks in common areas, the lessons learned from internet marketing can now be put to use beyond personal computers and mobile devices. 

Breaking this ad-space barrier is now creating vast new opportunities for engaging with high-value audiences where they live and work. Programmatic DOOH is helping agencies and brands get the attention of key decision-makers who are traditionally hard to reach.

We’ll cover the key benefits of programmatic DOOH advertising and how to use it effectively to supercharge your campaigns.

Key Benefits of Programmatic DOOH Advertising

Companies that have long built public-facing digital display channels now have at their disposal a prolific digital signage network that amounts to an effective ad medium. In creating the content delivery and ad space of the future, they’ve also honed that new medium’s use to a fine edge by leveraging one of the most important technologies to rock the digital marketing world: programmatic, or automated, advertising.

Today’s leading digital media companies have thoroughly capitalized on the incredible volumes of marketing data and customer analytics now available, and this emphasis on marketing analytics has naturally led to data automation. 

One of the fruits of these labors is programmatic advertising, which calculates the type of ad content most likely to resonate with an audience, then automatically purchases and places relevant ads for maximum impact with that audience. From there, the performance of programmatically proffered ads can then be analyzed, evaluated, and adjusted, leading to continually improving programmatic algorithms.

Programmatic advertising is not entirely new, but its advanced application into the digital screen network space is – and we have yet to see its true potential fully unleashed. With DOOH advertising breaking into yet-untapped marketing spaces, the potential of programmatic advertising outside of user-owned and -controlled devices is notable; it’s a strategy the top brands won’t want to ignore.

Breaking Through the Noise

By partnering with digital media companies, brands and agencies can have their ads strategically placed on digital screens in spaces their target audiences frequent. In combination with other marketing strategies, these screens in high-end office and multifamily buildings enable brands to reach potential customers even when they aren’t actively on their personal devices.  

Thanks to the vast variety of digital and printed media, consumer attention is spread thin, and it’s only getting weaker. There’s simply too much information for the human brain to process, making it even more challenging for brands to stand out and make a real impression. It’s one thing to be noticed, but to convert that recognition into a sale is the real challenge, and buyer’s take different paths in their purchasing journeys.

When you look at the complete buyer’s journey, you notice purchase decisions are made throughout the day. Large format screens in elevator banks and common areas and small format screens in elevators capture the attention of decision-makers in a different way than an ad on social media or the side of a bus. 

Professionals standing in an elevator, for example, are often looking for a distraction—something to diffuse the awkwardness of an elevator ride with strangers. They’re watching, listening and absorbing the content.

Most digital screen networks offer different types of content with rotating ads, designed specifically for brief attention. Professionals can get their news clips, weather reports and real-time stock market tickers while they’re waiting for their elevator. Content is curated to the interests of the professionals and decision-makers in that specific building. 

Agencies and brands can leverage this attention by having their ads placed within this content in brand-safe environments with contextual relevance, something that isn’t often as easy to do in other DOOH channels.

Related: What is digital signage software? Your Questions Answered

New Traditions

The benefits of programmatic DOOH advertising begin where traditional public-space advertisements left off. While out-of-home advertising is far from new, it’s almost always been based on print advertisements, which are labor-intensive to put up and replace. 

Further, print advertisements are static, meaning they cannot be immediately fine-tuned according to new discoveries in your market research, causing the ads to quickly become dated and audiences to tune them out after repeatedly seeing the same ones or for lack of interest or relevance.

As a medium, digital screens in public places fully surpass these limitations, enabling the digital media company to alter the advertising content whenever necessary. Audiences become interested in seeing what’s next, just as with television programming, and this novelty-seeking can be leveraged to the maximum extent possible with digital displays.

Digital-signage experts have learned how to fine-tune their content-programming methods to deliver messages their audiences value by interspersing ads they’re interested in with other value-adding content in a precisely timed way. They use advanced targeting and programmatics to pinpoint locations and audiences and then curate content and place ads that those audiences are most likely to find meaningful. For example, someone on an elevator may see an ad on their ride up to their office that triggers them to make a purchase when they get to their desk.

Generally speaking, the type of value-adding content that works well in any given area is unique according to the audience, current events, and other factors – and the best digital display companies can analyze the audience in a given location for the most effective result. At the same time, there are certain types of content that people are almost always interested in, such as:

• Local and national news reports
• Weather & traffic updates
• Property notifications
• Sports highlights
• Stock market reports
• Entertainment news

When this content is strategically curated for each location and blended with the brands viewers want to engage with, in the public spaces where they’re often waiting in or moving through anyway, the brands on display take front and center stage with the same hard-to-reach decision makers who are quickly scrolling past ads on their personal digital devices. 

The sequence of digital display content can be fine-tuned according to any factors that the analytics reveal might be advantageous for improving audience engagement. For example, after significant current or local events, the program can be temporarily customized to show audiences a human element behind the advertising. Discretion can be made for sensitive topics—a car advertisement would not run after a news story of an auto accident, for instance.

However it is done, it’s important to engage with your audiences as though you are providing the greatest benefit to them so that brand partners have not just the highest quantity of views, but the highest quality of attention.

Which Companies Are Benefiting Most From DOOH?

A global survey tracking DOOH ad spending in early 2022 discovered that the following industries are making the most concerted use of digital display ads:

• Media and entertainment
• Government bodies
• Retail
• Finance
• Telecommunications

Those on the other side of the display benefit from high contextual relevancy to their professions and lifestyles. This has been made possible by digital media experts who have thoroughly mastered the art of sequencing advertisements with various other types of targeted content to create an incredibly immersive experience.

Further, these leaders in digital media techniques have a prolific digital screen network in North America, partnering with prime real estate providers who want to provide a valued amenity to their residents or office tenants

How Do You Reach Those Hard-to-Reach Audiences?

The common thread uniting DOOH locations, such as commercial office buildings and multifamily high-rise buildings, is that it enables brands to reach higher-value, decision-making audiences who have traditionally been hard to reach. By connecting brands with key decision makers and higher net-worth individuals, companies’ advertising budgets go much farther and to greater effect.

The ROI of programmatic DOOH advertising is significant. Companies that incorporate it into their overall marketing strategy see doube, even triple-digit lifts in brand awareness, familiarity and consideration. They key for brands is to be in front of the right audience at the right time with the most relevant ads, and that is where programmatic DOOH advertising shines. 

Related: Content that Contributes to a Positive Tenant Experience

Automating DOOH Advertising

As programmatic advertising improves, the scale of advertising campaigns increases. When applied to a large network of DOOH screens, ad campaigns can be created in an effective and uniform way with greater assurance of campaign success.

To accomplish this, a digital media company uses advanced algorithms to set the parameters for ad purchases that will resonate with the audience where the screens are located.  The automated programmatic system calculates where and when to place those ads on the ad network (in this case, the digital screens). 

This is done according to maximum audience exposure and engagement by taking into account a breadth of demographics information and comparing it with the brand messages purchased on the ad exchange.

Digital Marketing Institute summarizes this process by saying, “Now, with programmatic advertising, you can rely on an algorithm that will determine where your money is best spent. All you have to do is feed your programmatic solution information about your campaign, audience, and key performance indicators, and the algorithm will do the hard work!”

The Interrelational Benefits of Programmatic DOOH Advertising

What programmatic DOOH advertising means for both the agency and the brands they represent is that the ads have the absolute highest effect possible according to the nuances of the audience, their present tastes, and their long-term needs. 

Brands benefit by not needing to engage in bidding wars to place their ads but allowing the technology to place their ads in the ideal environment and monitor ad spend to ensure money is spent on the highest-value placements. These brands have greater peace of mind that their message will be seen by an audience who is ready to engage with it.

DOOH Advertising – The Real Social Media

There is a lot of buzz being generated about both DOOH and programmatic advertising, and for good reason. When the two are combined, the results are unstoppable. These are trends that are going far beyond padding an already effective advertising strategy, though, and they are most truly set to completely alter the entire landscape of public-space advertising.

In order to maximize a brand’s ROI, it’s important to seek DOOH and programmatic advertising specialists with a broad digital screen network who accomplish all of these factors themselves and already have the necessary relationships and display networks at their disposal. 

All the others will, in some way, be contending with or trying to compete with them—and they’ll be doing so without the right tools. It’s far better to simply go straight to an elite, well-connected digital media provider from the beginning and ensure maximum exposure for your brand in the easiest, most streamlined way. This alone is how maximum benefits for programmatic advertisements can be realized. 

To learn more about how DOOH advertising can create easy new revenue streams for your partner-brands’ recognition, contact Captivate today. We’ve already established the most robust digital screen infrastructure in the nation, and we are looking for industry-leading brands eager to leverage the latest advances in advertising technology.