How to overcome the data dilemma to de-silo DOOH planning

Isn’t everyone buying data-driven programmatic digital-out-of-home (DOOH) these days? Today’s technology promises ‘innovative location intelligence’ and ‘AI-powered insight’ delivering ‘new levels of accuracy and effectiveness’. As a result, media planners and buyers often tend to use the same technology and methodology, in turn generating largely the same results. This maintains the status quo. No questions asked. 

Questions no-one asks

But what if no-one asks the questions because advertisers are blissfully unaware there are answers they’ve never heard. While you might be confident your campaign is data-driven, or more specifically audience-driven, how much do you really know about the data that powers it? And what if the data you used meant you no longer had to put up with planning your DOOH in silo?

Until recently, advertisers have had the luxury of leveraging a handful of common data sources for their display, video, audio, in fact any channel except out-of-home (OOH). OOH, historically harder to measure, has run standalone, sometimes informed by SDK or limited panel data, often guided with an element of common sense mixed with, let’s be honest, guesswork.

So advertisers have historically been forced to accept that DOOH is a different beast. Trickier to plan, awkward to measure. Maybe this is because the data used to inform the allocation of media spend can often be a little opaque in terms of its source and how it’s modelled, making it unfit for modern marketing. It’s pre-built and generic. Resulting in your campaign looking like anyone else's. In a world where everyone talks about being audience-driven, there needs to be a line. You need to explain where your data comes from and how it’s relevant. It’s really that simple. Is it real data, from real people? Is it data that can help define media decisions? Or is it data you received without any interrogation?  

No-one could be blamed for settling for the status quo because the risk of change is too high. So maybe it's time to remove the risk.
 

Trust in data to de-silo your campaign

Data exists that turns media planning and buying on its head. Data you can trust because you know exactly where it's from. And where it’s from guarantees you scale, recency and relevancy. What’s more, it means you can now plan your campaigns without predicting the best channels upfront. Instead you let the data decide. 

Dynamic data-sources such as mobile network data, or transactional data from finance services, not only ensures quality and transparency, it’s channel agnostic, connecting audiences across any channel, following them across their day.

One vegan FMCG brand launched using Skyrise. They were struggling to distinguish their very precise vegan audience, so Skyrise built audiences using cooking, dietary and recipe-based interest data. The brand ran an omnichannel campaign for launch, fuelled across all channels with the same data - defined by previously record-beating Sky AdSmart research findings, listings in major supermarkets and campaign activations for the following three years.

With dynamic analysis you can create bespoke audiences, not just for your brand, for every campaign. That is the very essence of how you de-silo DOOH. You craft your audience. Not a segment. Not a generic look-a-bit-like. 

One media owner explains: “Many brands today have to work with constraints and nuances as they plan DOOH. Alcohol brands, vape brands, fast food brands all need data that can deal with exceptions around location and time. Not every data source can cope with that level of granularity and still deliver an effective campaign.”

Put effort and value into using geo-temporal data analysis to understand where and when your audience are. 

Your competition doesn't have visibility on this audience. They don’t know who they are, let alone where they go. They are an underserved audience for your campaign, which is a valuable opportunity.
 

Activate everywhere with one common language

When using a trusted data source, (and a bespoke campaign audience) for DOOH, cross-channel planning becomes much easier. However, in order to activate effectively it’s critical that your data speaks a common language across channels.

Geo-temporal. Time and place. Where and when is that common language. 

All media channels can be activated in this way informing context and meaning in both the physical and digital worlds that we traverse each day. It enables a new way to design, activate and measure campaigns in DOOH and beyond. If you understand context, you understand your audience. 

For a recent campaign with a nature charity Skyrise used programmatic DOOH to provide unavoidable impact. This activity was supported by mobile display as a reminder, alongside audio ads as an additional emotive sensory experience, using the sounds of the forest. It was a finite geo-targeted campaign, which dominated the audience wherever they were, whenever they were there, for a 30-day period. The results spoke for themselves with a 32% increase in membership donors.
 

Use location-based measurement to prove effectiveness

This brings us nicely to measurement. Chasing misleading metrics rather than being guided by effectiveness has impacted channel planning for too long. Channels have been falsely bucketed into silos based on whether they generate attributed metrics. 

OOH is a classic case in point. For years it wasn’t seen as applicable at the bottom of the funnel. Attributable channels such as digital display or social media, that were linked to identifying metrics, fulfilled that part of the funnel. Guess what? Channels impact all stages of the funnel to varying degrees, depending on how you use them. 

With smarter measurement you are free to get the best out of all channels relative to your objective. DOOH can be used on response campaigns. The charity example above was effectively a direct response campaign. It was used because previous campaigns were stagnating on social and paid search. 
 

DOOH & walled gardens

That is where de-siloed DOOH comes into its own. It’s no longer isolated in competition with traditional OOH for budget. It's competing with the wider plan and specifically the walled garden advertising giants. In order to prove that DOOH can be as, if not more, effective, marketers need the data and tools to create a level playing field for measurement that isn’t shaped simply by what you can directly attribute.

Using real outcome data and a geo-temporal framework, we’re able to work with partners in exactly that way. Back to the nature charity, with the use of controlled and exposed geo’s we proved a 21% higher uplift in new memberships in exposed areas. The data means brands can enhance their long-term marketing strategy with the intelligence of areas which deliver greater results with a wider channel mix.
 

Modern marketing demands data works harder

Better data makes budgets go further and allows for a holistic view that enables better measurement of the ads’ effectiveness. 

Data used for planning in 2024 has got to work harder. It’s got to understand context, and it’s got to be audience centric, designed to bridge multiple channels with effectiveness at the core. The tools and tech have arrived to make this happen, it’s just down to us now to reimagine media planning and buying for the better.