Out-of-home (OOH) advertising is offering more opportunities for advertisers to take advantage of context, measurement, and experiential innovations to drive conversions. “Try it more. Use it not just for that one stunt,” said Anna Bager, president and CEO at the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA). Instead of focusing on one tentpole stunt, marketers should be using multiple OOH formats to supplement digital campaigns, Bager said.

Out-of-home spend will reach $9.19 billion this year, with an increasing share coming from digital, per our March 2024 forecast. Here are three trends Bager expects to see in OOH in 2025 and how each will impact brands.

1. Programmatic DOOH will improve contextual advertising

“If content is queen, context is God. In today’s landscape, it’s not just about what you say, but where and how you say it,” said Bager. OOH campaigns don’t only need eye-catching, creative copy and imagery; they need to be in the right place.

For example, Rosé brand Hampton Water uses billboards immediately adjacent to stores that carry the product, said co-founder Jesse Bongiovi, speaking at Advertising Week New York.

• More than half (51%) of people who have noticed directional digital OOH (DOOH) ads have subsequently visited the business, according to the OAAA.
• 93% of those who visited a business after noticing an ad completed a purchase.
• OOH is a particularly useful strategy for retail media advertising by pushing people into stores or by encouraging people in stores to convert.

Context isn’t just location. Programmatic DOOH is evolving, allowing advertisers to use live data on weather, traffic, time of day, and events to adjust ads to be as relevant as possible. For example, a beverage brand may show hot coffee on a cold, rainy morning and an ice cold drink as the sun comes out.

“As brands seek more effective ways to stand out, real-time programmatic DOOH will set the standard for impactful advertising,” Bager said.

2. Measurement and attribution will continue to improve

The ROI of OOH can be harder to prove because it doesn’t usually have the same closed-loop measurement capabilities a performance medium like a search ad might. But measurement has gotten more sophisticated and real-time measurement tools, geo-fencing, and location targeting technologies are increasingly common.

And measurement will keep improving. “Attribution models will evolve to better account for the impact of OOH advertising on overall marketing goals, providing a clearer understanding of its contribution to sales and conversions,” Bager predicted.

3. Creative implementations will allow for more robust data collection

“Interactive billboards and displays will become more common, allowing consumers to engage directly with ads and receive personalized content,” Bager predicted. AI will play a critical role in allowing personalized mobile extensions on OOH campaigns, she said.

The promise of interactive mobile content encourages consumers to scan QR codes, which provides consumer data to OOH advertisers.

“Data-hungry advertisers will no doubt love to have more information about how many exposed consumers actually scan the code, the depth of engagement, first-party data about specific consumers that can be aggregated to inform future campaigns or incorporated into a CDP (customer data platform) to target and measure media in other channels,” said our analyst Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf on a “Behind the Numbers” episode.

This was originally featured in the EMARKETER Daily newsletter.

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