The future looks pretty darn exciting when it comes to Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) advertising, a channel that keeps growing into new locations with hundreds of new formats. At Moving Walls, we’re particularly pleased with all the attention DOOH media is getting from industry leaders and other channels. In what has now become an annual tradition, let’s gaze at the crystal ball and highlight the top trends to look forward to when it comes to DOOH media in 2024.
Digital OOH (DOOH) spending will increasingly get traded programmatically, as brands and agencies cosy up to automated media buying. The ease of optimized bulk deals, coupled with dynamic ad injections based on real-time triggers – that is the sweet programmatic value driving an increased $33 Billion of DOOH media dollars in 2024. According to Dentsu Global Ad Spend Forecasts, covering 58 markets across the globe, advertising spending will expand by $33 billion in 2024 to reach $752.8 billion. Trading made it so simple!
Whether programmatic DOOH [pDOOH] is bringing “digital dollars” to OOH or not will continue to be debated. However, there is no question that programmatic has got digital advertising enthusiasts to test OOH media. This will continue to trend upwards as access to programmatic DOOH gets easier – more specialist and direct business-targeted DOOH Demand Side Platforms come into play.
While we’re on programmatic, expect more DOOH network owners to go directly “fully integrated” by owning the ad trading stack. Rather than rely on third-party programmatic partners, big media owners like jeki in Japan are already using white-labelled software solutions. This direct supply path promises better yield management and performance for DOOH inventory holders.
The last few years have seen various types of OOH media owners test technology from different players. Similar to digital advertising, many media owners work with several Supply Side Platforms (SSPs) and are even reliant on these external companies to bring in demand.
This is now changing as the media owners establish their in-house teams to take better control of these automated demand sources. Being able to bring in additional value in the form of first party data or customised packages are just a couple of benefits that media owners can bring to the table when they establish such a practice.
Cookieless advertising? OOH is perhaps best placed to milk the increasing demand for privacy-compliant advertising. Many of the popular pDOOH case studies have an element of dynamic content.
Just by being in the physical environment, OOH is best placed to be contextual when seen by audiences around it. Expect to see an increase in the use of signals such as weather, traffic, user-generated content, and more when it comes to dynamic DOOH delivery.
Factors like the penetration of 5G connectivity and the presence of big DOOH networks will also contribute to the use of dynamic content as it becomes easier to deliver such content – standard DOOH sizes and fewer bandwidth limitations.
As digital ecosystems converge, DOOH has already been embraced by the largest digital advertising platforms. The medium is already seen as a key element for campaigns that desire high reach because of its presence across so many venues.
DOOH is also now being linked to specific outcomes like sales lift or improvements in digital conversions. Specific DOOH venues also enable conversion-led elements like QR codes to be added in.
Expect more performance-lead campaign spending on DOOH media especially for tactical or seasonal purposes. This also means that the demand for measurement partnerships that can provide such data is also growing and companies that collect large amounts of first-party data are building solutions to address this.
Although retail media is the fairly new kid on the block, it has largely referred to e-commerce platforms or super apps that offer first-party advertising solutions. It has quickly become popular because of the ability to reach consumers at the point of purchase or when they are about to make a purchase.
Naturally, in-store media is seen as a natural part of retail media. The largest retailers are building technology and partnerships to offer in-store DOOH media at scale and powered by first-party data they collect from loyalty apps, purchases, and other sources.
DOOH retail solutions are actually the perfect demonstration of what emerging technology can do for an age-old medium. Marketers can reach a very specific audience segment, build interesting content and offers, measure the performance of these and tweak it as required to improve it. The best part is that the content is not intrusive, there are high dwell times, and the audience is not being personally targeted.
If you read this far down, you must be just as excited as us about the progress that OOH media has made and will continue to do so in 2024. For marketers, there are so many potential applications no matter what your objectives are. Embrace the DOOH trends and ride the wave into the future of DOOH!
Our OOH predictions end here but the learning never stops. For more on what to expect and how to get ahead of the competition (with us of course), download our ebook here.
Also, read: Benefits of Programmatic DOOH