Digital advertising gets more crowded as Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) keeps growing into a flexible and measurable medium. Venelize de Lange from media update talks to Remi du Preez about what marketers misunderstand about outdoor advertising and how to use it more strategically.
Everyone is chasing clicks and feed placement, meanwhile, it's getting more difficult to reach anyone online as the space proves more crowded each day. Out-of-home skips that problem. It puts it in front of people as they go about their day, no doomscrolling past to worry about.
Remi du Preez, Polygon's Managing Director, has watched the industry move from static billboards to something a lot smarter and more responsive. In this Q&A, he talks about what that means for marketers, and why understanding where, when and how people encounter a brand can be just as important as what happens on their screens.
What do you think marketers misunderstand about DOOH, especially those who primarily think in terms of social, search and other digital channels?
I think there are three big misconceptions.
The first is cost. There's still a perception that Out-of-Home (OOH) is expensive and therefore only really accessible to big brands with big budgets, and, historically, there was some truth to that. If you wanted a premium billboard, you were effectively buying that piece of real estate for a set period.
Programmatic DOOH changes that considerably because you can buy a portion of that inventory rather than having to own the whole thing. I often compare it to an Airbnb: you don't have to book the property for the entire month; you can access it for the period you actually need. In much the same way, marketers can now access premium DOOH inventory in smaller, more targeted segments, which makes it far more accessible.
The second misconception comes from how digital-first marketers tend to think about performance. Social and search have trained us to focus heavily on immediate actions — clicks, leads and conversions. Those things matter, but they aren't the whole job of marketing.
DOOH is exceptionally good at building visibility, familiarity and trust at scale. And, when a brand is already established in someone's mind, the other channels in the mix tend to work harder too.
Digital channels are incredibly effective at capturing intent and driving action, but relying on them alone to build a brand can be difficult. Consumers are exposed to an enormous volume of online advertising, often in environments where they are actively trying to scroll past or avoid it. DOOH plays a very different role because it exists naturally in the physical environments people move through every day.
The third misconception is that DOOH can't be measured. That simply isn't true anymore. On Prism, for example, advertisers can see how many times their ad was played and estimated audience exposure, giving them a much clearer view of campaign delivery than many people associate with traditional OOH.
Across the broader programmatic DOOH ecosystem, measurement can go further still. Depending on the campaign and technology being used, it is possible to connect exposure to subsequent behaviours such as website visits or store visits.
So, I think the shift marketers need to make is to stop thinking of DOOH as an expensive, traditional medium sitting outside of digital. Increasingly, it offers the flexibility, targeting and measurability digital marketers are accustomed to, while bringing something those channels can struggle to deliver on their own: high-impact, real-world brand presence.
You've mentioned being more deliberate about where and when an ad appears. How should brands decide whether a location or time of day is actually worth paying for?
I think it comes down to two questions: is my audience likely to be here, and are they in the right mindset for my message? The first is relatively straightforward. People are habitual and while our routines have become somewhat more flexible, there are still predictable patterns in where particular audiences are likely to be at different times of the day.
If I'm trying to reach parents, for example, advertising near schools during the school run makes sense. Serving the same ad between 10:00 and midday, when far fewer parents are likely to be there, probably doesn't. The same applies to gyms, shopping centres, transport routes or business districts. You need to understand where your audience is and when they are most likely to be in that environment.
But, being in front of the right person isn't enough. The second question is whether your message is relevant to them at that particular moment. You might know that a certain location gives you access to an audience of beer drinkers, but that doesn't necessarily mean 09:00 is the best time to advertise beer to them. Later in the afternoon, approaching the weekend, or around payday, that same person may be far more receptive to the message.
That's where DOOH becomes really interesting. Instead of simply asking, "Where can I reach my audience?", brands can start asking, "When is this audience most likely to be here, and when will what I'm advertising actually matter to them?".
You don't necessarily need someone to act immediately after seeing the ad. But there should be some logic connecting the audience, the environment, the timing and the likelihood that your product or service will be relevant to them in the near future.
Ultimately, a location or time slot is worth paying for when those things align. Reach the right person, in the right place, when they're in the right mindset for what you have to say.
DOOH is regularly discussed alongside digital because of its ability to use data and programmatic buying. Is that comparison useful, or does thinking of a billboard as "another digital ad" miss what makes the medium different?
It does miss what makes DOOH different. There are certainly crossovers. DOOH can use data, it can be bought programmatically and it offers much greater flexibility than traditional OOH — but I wouldn't put it in exactly the same category as other digital advertising.
The fundamental difference is how people experience it. A digital ad is generally served one-to-one on a personal device. DOOH is one-to-many: you can have hundreds or thousands of people moving past a screen and the message isn't personalised to an individual. Instead, it can be made relevant to the environment, the context and the audience likely to be there at a particular time.
That gives the different channels different strengths. Traditional digital advertising is incredibly effective when it comes to performance, targeting and measurement. DOOH's superpower is awareness: creating visibility at scale and helping to build familiarity and trust in a brand.
I think the better way to look at them is as ingredients in the same recipe. Pasta on its own can be quite basic — it's what you combine it with that makes the dish work. DOOH is one of those ingredients. It can bring scale, visibility and trust to a campaign, while digital channels can help convert that awareness into action.
So, rather than asking whether DOOH is another form of digital advertising, the more useful question is how the strengths of each can work together. DOOH has gained some of the flexibility and intelligence we associate with digital, but it still has the very different characteristics of a public, physical, high-reach medium.
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*Image courtesy of Canva