Why Independent Verification Is Vital For DOOH’s Success

Mo Moubayed (lead image) is the co-founder of Veridooh which provides independent verification for all out of home advertising. In this guest post, Moubayed argues that digital out of home is adland’s hot new play thing, but it’s success shouldn’t be at the expense of traditional outdoor…

The out-of-home (OOH) industry has been enjoying a strong bounce-back following the pandemic. Audiences and marketers are relishing the opportunity to connect in outdoor spaces, and as a result brands, media owners and agencies are working together to produce some of the best OOH campaigns we’ve seen in a long time.

Across Australia, OOH was up 62.2 per cent YOY in September, according to SMI figures. This is part of a wider trend with net media revenue for the first half of the year up 19.5 per cent for the sector, reaching $478.6 million, according to the Outdoor Media Association. This is up from $400.4 million for the same period last year. Digital OOH (DOOH) reached 62.4 per cent of total net media revenue, up from 58.3 per cent the year prior.

This is the recovery everyone expected for OOH, particularly for DOOH which combines the efficiency of digital and the big impact of billboards and panels.

However, OOH should be doing more than recouping ad dollars lost during the pandemic and grow its overall share of brands’ advertising budgets by attracting new money into the sector. Kinetic global CEO Keith Kaplan spoke about his desire for OOH to attract four per cent of digital advertising, making the point that growth in DOOH should not come from traditional OOH. Instead he highlighted that the sector needs new money flowing in.

This is something OOH can achieve. In fact, we’re slowly seeing this pattern emerge among brands that use independent verification and gain greater confidence in OOH.

Attracting new brands to OOH

A recent example of this is a confectionery brand that had not spent money in OOH for eight years because of the perceived lack of transparency and data around the sector. In 2020, after being encouraged by its media agency to test DOOH while using Veridooh’s independent verification solution, the client began advertising across multiple OOH formats, including street furniture and retail. Using the data we provided, the client was able to track when and where the ads ran and then cross matched it to point-of-sale data and identified an uplift in sales. As a result, the client went on to divert 4% of its online and TV ad spend into DOOH as part of its new media mix.

Another Veridooh client, in the financial services industry, had an annual media spend of $10 million, none of which was spent on OOH. The client had not spent money on OOH since 2015, also citing concerns around perceived shortfalls in transparency and accountability in the sector. In 2019, the client began testing DOOH, in part because of the increased transparency our independent verification provided. For the trial period, the client allocated five per cent of its budget to DOOH, with a focus on large format and street furniture. After running a series of trial campaigns over 14 months, the client was impressed by the ROI it was receiving from DOOH and as a result it incorporated OOH into its media mix, diverting eight per cent of its annual spend from various channels and putting it into OOH from 2021.

This is how independent verification is contributing towards growing the overall OOH pie. Clients that have shied away from the sector because of the lack of independent, third-party verification are now able to see the strong results the channel provides them. This means they’re more likely to include OOH advertising in their advertising budgets.

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Mo Moubayed Veridooh