Digital can mean tactical for outdoor

Neil Morris, founder & MD, Grand Visual, says the future looks like it may offer an environment that could nurture the transformation of digital outdoor from a “store forward and loop” medium to a “dynamic data driven” one…

Seven years ago Viacom Outdoor launched the first run of Digital Escalator Panels at Tottenham Court Road underground station. These, accompanied by Titan Outdoor’s Transvision screens at rail stations, were really the only digital outdoor media being bought in the UK back then.

Today, the picture couldn’t be more different. Digital now represents 16.7% of all outdoor spend (Q1 2012) and there are a huge number of networks and formats to play with. This fast expansion brought with it an immediate transformation in media flexibility and advertisers quickly began making use of day-of-week or day-part booking opportunities.

The technology revolution across the out of home landscape has posed real challenges with the inevitable lag between platform development and truly effective usage of that platform.

The role that digital outdoor plays in the marketing mix hasn’t really changed significantly since the introduction of moving image. Perhaps what has been slow to evolve is the communication flexibility and until relatively recently digital outdoor has been utilised predominantly in a similar fashion to its static counterpart.

So what about campaigns that are all about disseminating fresh and timely content; or are directly interactive; or invite indirect participation in some way; or reflect user generated activity in another channel. How can these campaign objectives be accommodated?

Most UK media owners can facilitate dynamic campaigns. Each network, however, has a different process from copy vetting through to scheduling and posting. When you combine this with the variance in format specification and file delivery – then the ability to run national, cross network dynamic campaigns can become strained and problematic rather than instant and timely, hence the relative lack of development in more tactical communication to come out of this sector.

This month, with the launch of OpenLoop, a digital out of home campaign management dashboard that facilitates the delivery of dynamic content across multiple networks, we are hoping to see another milestone moment in terms of the evolution of digital out of home.

Instead of DOOH formats working in silos, OpenLoop navigates the diversity and nuances of the medium allowing brands and their creative teams to concentrate on exploiting the medium to its full creative potential. This gets you thinking about using the DOOH platform in a different way – more akin to on-line with tactical, targeted and timely copy.

The potential for making outdoor advertising relevant is enormous. We are already seeing a shift in DOOH creative from linear copy to dynamic, with more and more clients demanding the immediacy and responsiveness that the medium can now deliver.

This is particularly salient for Olympic driven communication, where brands are keen to tap into the emotion and excitement of the world’s largest sporting event – as it happens.

RSS feeds, score boards, and social media buzz are critical factors here and we are in the midst of producing dynamic, data driven campaigns for brands looking to capitalise on the national focus on an event of this size.

So the future looks like it may offer an environment that could nurture the transformation of digital outdoor from a “store forward and loop” medium to a “dynamic data driven” one – and eventually a new value model for the medium where buyers can book media space based on dynamic demand and supply, like most online and mobile channels.

Now DOOH can really start to deliver on one of its key selling points – its ability to react in real-time with relevant copy to a broadcast audience.