From billboards on long road trips to window displays at the local mall, consumers have long connected to out-of-home (OOH) advertising. Now, with DOOH advertising, things have gone digital—and advertisers of all shapes and sizes are reaping the rewards.
DOOH advertising is the art of providing your target audience with compelling campaigns when they’re out and about in the real world. Meet them as they stroll down the street, ride the elevator, or wait to check out at the grocery store. Potential customers are there already—it’s time your brand was too.
And here’s the real bonus. While DOOH advertising means being in multiple places at once, with Yodeck it’s not necessary to master quantum mechanics to make this happen. You can deliver visually spectacular media-rich content on the go, affordably and efficiently, from a single device.
The WOW! effect of a Times Square billboard is now at everyone’s fingertips. Keen to find out more? Read on for the full scoop.
What Does DOOH Mean in Advertising?
DOOH stands for digital-out-of-home advertising.
Let’s break that down into its parts:
The OOH in DOOH
Out-of-home advertising is, as you may have guessed, the kind of advertising a consumer encounters outside their homes.
According to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, out-of-home media formats are loosely divided into:
- Billboards (a category that includes murals and posters)
- Street furniture (on bus shelters and benches, news racks, and kiosks)
- Transit (in buses, trains, airports, and cabs)
- “Alternative” (which includes everything from blimps and inflatables to projections).
OOH has many benefits. It allows you to drive brand awareness to new audiences who may not have otherwise encountered your company. Plus, it enables you to target the specific audiences you want to reach. For example, that burger joint billboard just near the turn-off for the burger joint is no accident.
In the past, OOH meant static displays. Think big billboards that cross freeways, signs in public transit, and flyers laid out at your hair salon. But things are changing.
While OOH spending went through a dip in 2020—for obvious reasons—the industry is on the up again. And as this Statista study reveals, new growth is largely to do with innovation made in the digital sphere.
Essentially, it was putting that ‘D’ at the beginning of DOOH that gave the industry as a whole a leg up.
D is for Digital
Bringing the digital element to OOH advertising has quickly transformed the capabilities of the medium.
Now, you can display media-rich displays—that include video, images, live streams, and webpages—able to compete with the noise of our contemporary world. (Because, let’s be honest, a lot is vying for our attention out there.)
With digital-out-of-home advertising, you can:
- Create eye-catching signage that has that stop-and-stare effect
- Ensure that your advertising is put in front of the right eyes
- Control your digital screens remotely from a single device (more on this below!)
- Set up digital signage in a variety of prime locations.
That means you can increase brand awareness by running an integrated campaign that meets your audience where they’re already at.
What is an Example of DOOH Advertising?
Time to get inspired. DOOH advertising examples include:
Digital billboards
Size has an impact. It’s no wonder billboard placement can go for $2.5 million. But it’s not only the size of the frame but what it contains that counts. Professional-grade creative content is needed to make your advertising square footage worth it.
Enter the digital billboard—a large LED screen that displays digital imagery that can be remotely controlled on a separate device. Whether you’d like to display a simple logo, live stream a promotion, or create a quirky video campaign, digital billboards offer the perfect canvas for big-scale thinkers.
Head here to learn how to run your own with a Yodeck media player.
Freestanding screens
Keen to advertise a sale at your store, introduce your community to new stock, or simply point new customers to your location? Freestanding digital displays can help you do all that.
Known as Stand Alone Displays or Digital Kiosks, this type of display gives you the flexibility to set up wherever you like.
Freestanding screens are also a great way to draw your audience’s attention to their pocket-size screen. Let them know what’s up on your social media channels and website, point them to loyalty programs or show them where to sign up to be a part of your community.
This can be achieved through customized QR codes that are easy to generate through the Yodeck CMS.
Social walls
If you’re looking to maximize the potential of your social media campaigns, you might want to hit a wall (in a good way). Yodeck’s collaboration with Walls.io can make this happen.
Social media walls are live streamings from social media sites like Instagram and Twitter. They give your social media campaigns legs, allowing you to connect to new audiences who may not already be on your socials.
They are often curated based on a specific topic that can be funneled through a hashtag or handle. This is the perfect coming together of at-home and out-of-home, from screen time to real-time.
You can read all about how to create them here.
Little screens that go a long way
While we’re fans of the show-stopping spectacle of the digital billboard, we know just how much of a punch small screens can pack.
They require very little real estate and offer significant rewards. And just because the display is small, it doesn’t mean it’s not sophisticated. You’re still able to incorporate all of the media layers you can on a larger screen and control it remotely.
You might want to consider point-of-purchase screens that give that little nudge that a potential customer may need to convert. Tailor your message specifically to a precise moment in a customer journey, offering an intimate connection that shows you understand precisely where they’re at. Examples include advertising a promo at check-out or reminding customers to get their milk before leaving the store.
Alternatively, branded content in high-traffic places like transit systems delivers your message to a captive audience.
Why Use DOOH in Advertising?
The benefits of digital-out-of-home advertising are multiple. You can:
- Target the right audience where they’re at. Your ideal community doesn’t have to search for you. You find them. And that means you increase brand awareness, decrease waste in marketing spend, and up conversions.
- Combat ad blindness. Consumers feel overwhelmed with the volume of marketing materials that come at them online. The result is that their “ad-brains” become oversaturated. (For example, research shows that it’s difficult to overcome banner blindness in digital marketing, where viewers manage to entirely miss information presented in banner form.) DOOH inspires a new kind of engagement with branded content—and that means open eyes.
- Beat out the competition. The reality is, if you’re vying for a Number One spot in a search engine, you’re likely going to have to elbow your competitors out of the way. DOOH means using an alternate strategy to bypass the obstacles to finding your target audience.
- Inspire awe. DOOH advertising is a marketing strategy that allows you to flex your conceptual muscles and create striking content that dazzles. Whether that’s on a huge billboard or a small screen above a bus seat, there’s a big opportunity here for creative magic.
- Control your campaigns remotely. While your ads go out and do their work, you can stay at home. Multiple displays can be controlled from a single device. And with our easy-to-navigate CMS, you don’t have to have an advanced degree to make this happen.
- Integrate the great work you’re already doing. DOOH can form a crucial part of an omnichannel strategy. If you have a significant social media presence and want to extend your reach, including a DOOH campaign is the way to do so. Live social feeds can increase the impact of the creative work you’ve already put in, and can be incorporated with minimal cost and effort.
What a DOOH Campaign Can Do For Your Business
Looking for a DOOH advertising platform to get you started? Yodeck is it.
It’s as simple as this:
- Sign up for a free account.
- Get a Yodeck media player, the hardware that connects to your screens, for optimum display of your content. (They’re free with our annual plans.)
- Design your DOOH ads using our striking, easy-to-use templates, or come up with your own design.
- Connect your media player to your screen (and a power source!)
- Upload your media and hit “PUSH”.
- Manage your content — even on multiple screens in different locations — from wherever you’re at using the Yodeck CMS.
Ready to book a demo?