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“Outdoor” was considered a tool available only to large companies. Now static is being replaced by digital screens that even small businesses can rent. What other opportunities does this format give advertisers?
About the expert: Valentin Yeltsov, Gallery Product Director.
Why demand for digital outdoors is growing
According to Research and Markets, the digital out of home (DOOH) market will grow to $35,1 billion by 2027. In 2020, the market size was estimated at $18,8 billion.
In our country, the growth of DOOH over the past few years has become even more noticeable, even despite the pandemic. The volume of the digital outdoor market from 2019 to 2021, according to the Association of Communication Agencies in our country for January-September 2021, grew by 45% – this is the largest figure among all advertising formats.
One of the reasons for the growth of DOOH is related to the development of programmatic – automated purchase of ads through platforms. Previously, to launch a campaign, you had to go to an agency. Now you can do it yourself — online, through personal accounts of advertising services, and literally in 10 minutes: you need to select the city, the amount of payment for the impression or 1000 contacts, screens and upload the creative.
Programmatic allows you to show ads at specific times, such as every Wednesday at 13:00. Companies can choose the interval when the most potential customers will walk past the screen. All this helps to distribute advertising costs more efficiently.
Programmatic also removes local restrictions: a company from any city can buy impressions at home, in Moscow or any other city.
New technologies in outdoor advertising
The key innovation is that the data from the devices that the Wi-Fi trap collects under each screen can be used to measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns and narrower targeting. There are two ways to target ads:
Another new feature is to use the MAC addresses of users who saw ads on the screen to retarget them on the Internet. This can be done through your Yandex.Direct personal account or MyTarget.
How small businesses are using DOOH
According to Yandex research, small and medium-sized companies spend about ₽360 per year on online advertising, and about ₽70 on offline activity.
According to our data, on average, SMEs spend about ₽20–30 per month on DOOH advertising. The spread is large – some companies spend ₽5 thousand per month, some ₽50 thousand. However, we noticed that companies enter into a contract for a long time. For example, in the first month, one of the shopping centers in St. Petersburg spent ₽5 thousand on advertising, and after four months the budget increased to ₽100 thousand.
Advertising on the screens began to be bought by those companies that had never been interested in “outdoor” before – for example, beauty salons and small cafes-bistros.
What is happening with digital outdoor advertising in the regions
Over the past year, we have increased the number of screens in the regions by 18%. According to our forecasts, the demand for DOOH advertising outside the capital will increase, both for large companies and small businesses.
As I noted above, companies from other regions can also use programmatic. So, we were approached by a startup from Ryazan, which is developing a service for OSAGO based on artificial intelligence. The company placed ads in all cities where we installed screens. Moreover, Gallery does not have digital screens in Ryazan itself.
How will advertising on large screens develop?
- In the near future, advertising settings will become even more flexible. Brands will be able to quickly change creatives and test hypotheses: upload several banners and check which one attracted more people.
- There are more and more advertising launch platforms that integrate with each other through a single system. This allows advertisers to run campaigns on more screens in an even shorter amount of time.
- The use of big data in DOOH will lead to the growth of omnichannel communications, each stage influencing the process of interaction with the brand in its own way. For example, it will be possible to run an outdoor advertisement, collect the MAC addresses of people who saw it, and then “catch up” with them on the Internet by changing the message.
- Measuring the effectiveness of advertising campaigns will become even more transparent, clearer and more accurate.
- Beyond that, creativity will become increasingly important. Bright videos in 4K quality, 3D and pseudo 3D solutions will attract attention even more, keep it better, and also “force” citizens to share such advertising more often on their social networks.
- DOOH will be in demand equally among small and large businesses.