OOH & The Power of Context

How do you go about engaging an audience?

Engagement is a key driver to conversion and when it comes to advertising, what advertiser wouldn’t want their campaign to engage a prospective audience? This is where context comes in.

Contextual advertising is when a brand uses context to help formulate and dictate their strategy, and subsequent campaigns, and can become a key method of engagement and brand building.

OOH is a highly-flexible medium that can offer a brand the opportunity to display their campaigns when and where they want, at the right place and at the right time. It has been proven to forge meaningful connections with its audiences and play on viewers’ emotions. Using context in OOH campaigns really cuts through the noise and ‘speaks’ to individuals, becoming relevant to their current situation.

 

There are many prime opportunities to play on context in a OOH campaign, for example, including copy specific to a city in which the campaign is being displayed, copy that changes with the weather or time of day, or even copy relevant to cultural events. A fantastic example of playing on context within a cultural event is Sky Bet’s EFL campaign, which was displayed on our BOXPARK Wembley site with specific and timely 3D copy being dictated using real-time data. The first set of copy accompanied the fans as they were travelling up Wembley Way to the stadium, and was then changed throughout the day to be specific to the team who won the football match being played. Data collected from our AdMobilize facility reported a +7% uplift in number of views, +15% uplight in average session time and a +16% uplift in attention time, which shows just how effective a contextually relevant campaign can be.

So, why is context so important?

 

In modern day life consumers are constantly bombarded with ads and information coming from all directions, especially when out of the home. OOH especially, is hard to avoid, with Outsmart stating that 98% of all the UK population exposed to it weekly. In all of this advertising noise it has been proven that consumers are most likely to pay attention to stimuli that is relevant to them.

 

A study by Clear Channel has found that in OOH campaigns, using contextually relevant content increases ad effectiveness by an average of 17%. Not only this but a further study revealed that advertising at the relevant moment leads to a 12% increase in brain response.

Personalisation and targeting is powerful, especially when it comes to advertising campaigns. With the use of data, brands have the opportunity to discover more about audiences they are wanting to target. Platforms such as Starcount and AdMobilize provide audience insights which help to inform campaign planning and deliver hyper-targeted and contextual campaigns to audiences.

 

Another easy way to deliver contextual ad campaigns is by using Programmatic OOH (PrOOH). A rapidly growing channel, PrOOH is the automated buying and selling of OOH ad space, and allows buyers to set parameters such as specific audiences, location and time, and automatically purchase ad space when these conditions are met. Benefits of PrOOH can include specifically targeted ad campaigns, as well as real-time optimisation, two key components which can assist in a successful contextual campaign.

 

In conclusion, the power of context without OOH lies in its ability to create meaningful connections with audiences. By leveraging key environments, timings and harnessing audience data, a contextual OOH campaign can speak to viewers and in turn drive consumer action. Particularly as the PrOOH landscape evolves, data-driven and contextually relevant campaign planning will only enhance the already-impactful OOH world.

 

To learn more about how you could harness the power of OOH for your campaign, contact sales@openmedia.uk.com