Businesses were using design, text, and art to reach the masses long before televisions were popular or mobile phones were accessible. They would paint walls and print posters and banners to convey their message. Such ads are placed in crowded or high-traffic outdoor areas, like roads or markets, giving them the name Out-of-Home (OOH) advertisements.
In this article, we’ll discuss how these forms of ads are still relevant in today’s smartphone-dominated age. Let’s go through the types, considerations, and pros and cons of outdoor advertisements.
The Types of Out-of-Home Ads
You can market your brand through offline out-of-home advertisements using the following techniques:
1. Billboards in High-Traffic Areas
Prominent billboard advertisements have dominated busy areas, like roads and railway stations, for a long. You can reach thousands of people by securing a placement in a high-traffic area, making your brand known to newer individuals every moment at a one-time cost.
Conventional, printed billboards consist of large canvases that must be re-printed and re-mounted every time you need a change of creatives. Although they are still used, they’re increasingly being replaced by digital billboards that can provide a much more immersive viewing experience. You can utilize augmented reality advertising on digital billboards to make a statement. Utilize futuristic, flexible, and even curved LED billboard screens to pique viewer interest with the right ad creatives.
2. Transit, Mobile, or Vehicle Advertising
If you want your message to reach individuals across cities, you can utilize mobile advertisements. These include wraps and screens placed on taxis, buses, trucks, and other vehicles.
Transit advertisements are beneficial in cities where public transport is favored. Whether people are waiting for the next bus or boarding a taxi, your message will reach them.
This OOH method overcomes the limitations of classic billboard advertisements due to its mobility. LED screens, like car back window displays, can ensure that you aren’t limited by posters either.
You can make them a part of your campaign accompanying your airports, bus stands, or subway advertisement advertisements.
3. Street Furniture Advertising
From bus stands to benches, every location can be your canvas if you understand its potential. Consider KitKat’s ingenious take on it below:
Notice how the advertisement is subtle, relevant, and creative – it does not randomly plaster a message on a bench made for relaxing. This particular method is a form of guerilla advertisement discussed in the next section.
Street furniture advertisements speak to individuals one-on-one at an intimate level, allowing you to make a profound statement.
You can use posters, banners, or outdoor media, like waterproof LED stands and screens, to advertise items that pedestrians and commuters interact with or view, like:
- Newsstands
- Kiosks
- transit shelters
- benches
- street light poles
This method is relatively inexpensive due to its smaller size, but it offers a high reach.
4. Art, Murals, and Guerilla Advertisements
Art has a way of speaking to the masses in a way words often fail. Large static advertisements are painted or printed, like murals, wild postings, and wall scapes. These have been a common form of garnering viewer attention, even for humanitarian and activist causes.
You can also use unconventional methods and leverage the element of surprise – guerilla advertisements. Whether it’s Bounty’s giant melting popsicle on New York’s street or the subtle KitKat bench, artistic advertisement forms like guerilla ads often leave a mark in your audience’s memory.
You can use a few sub-branches of guerilla advertisements:
- Outdoor guerilla advertisements are placed in outdoor spaces for passersby to observe.
- Indoor guerilla marketing occurs on private and enclosed properties, like this Frontline advertisement.
- In event ambush guerilla marketing, you use the element of surprise in large events, like the Fiji Girl in Golden Globes.
- In experimental guerilla campaigns, you make unsuspecting audiences engage with your brand, like Coca-Cola’s happiness machine.
Using projections on the night-time sky is also an effective, although expensive, form of guerilla advertisement.
5. Place-Based Advertisements
This out-of-home advertising method uses signage placed in buildings and properties like malls, stadiums, and nightclubs.
If you want your outdoor advertisement to be effective, use it in the relevant context. For example, viewers won’t notice a cleaning product’s advertisement at a bar, but a water company’s poster reminding them to stay hydrated to deal with hangovers can make a mark.
Similarly, if you want to enhance your brand’s awareness, you can advertise in areas that receive diverse crowds, like airports and malls. For instance, you can use interactive digital signage kiosks to guide consumers toward a purchase or assist them inside a mall while increasing your brand’s awareness.
Place-based advertisements also include Point-of-Sale Advertisements, where you place ads in the location where your products are sold; for example, retail outlets. This can capture impulse purchases as well.
6. Construction Advertisements
You can post signage on any constructed feature for your OOH advertisement. For instance, a window, a wall, or a phone booth on the street. Such advertisements are not often very prominent and face much competition from their neighbors. So, you need to place your work in a thoughtful and relevant manner.
Many marketers also refer to ads placed on construction sites as construction advertisements. Here workers need to cover building facades or erect fences. Scaffoldings, in particular, can act as large and prominent canvases. Brands can get their offers printed on such items, and drivers or passersby can notice these.
How to Conduct Successful OOH Campaigns for Your Business
Out-of-home advertisements are incredible in their broad reach, lower cost, and greater potential to engage audiences. However, you need to conduct them in the proper manner. Keep these points in mind:
1. Use Strategic Placements
Unlike digital social media or PPC advertisements, your viewers won’t get their OOH advertisements one at a time. Instead, they’ll likely be swarmed in the streets by signage and billboards, and your attempt may skip their notice altogether.
Instead of going for the most high-traffic area, carefully considering your advertisement’s context is best. Consider where is your target audience most likely to be, the pet park or the jewelry store.
Busy and crowded locations will serve you best if your audience isn’t highly niche-specific and you want to enhance your brand’s awareness among everyone.
For instance, a cleaning product is relevant to everyone, whereas a discount on a website’s hosting plan doesn’t need an expensive Times Square advertisement.
2. Vamp-Up Your Ad Creatives
Text alone simply won’t do the job of capturing viewer attention. You don’t want to appear too loud either – it may bother people who are merely attempting to do their chores quietly. We recommend working with experts to design immersive, non-intrusive, and attention-capturing advertisement experiences.
Keep your copy and text compelling but brief – a passenger will not stop to read an essay! Illustrations, short videos, and bold photographs will get your point across in a better manner.
3. Utilize Digital Integration
You can make your OOH advertisements interactive to capture impulse decisions and facilitate customer interaction with your brand. For instance, you can place QR codes on your LED advertising screen that lead users to discounts and promo codes. This will also help you measure the effectiveness of your out-of-home campaigns by letting you track people who visited your website through the code.
Advantages and Disadvantages of OOH Advertising Campaigns
Let’s discuss the pros and cons of outdoor advertisement campaigns.
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Endnote
Outdoor advertisements can act as engaging marketing tactics if you design them in the right manner. Using digital banners, screens, and billboards can let you enhance your campaigns by providing immersive experiences. Such campaigns also expose customers to more touchpoints to make your brand memorable. Make sure you use the right creatives, tools, and screens to maximize the effectiveness of your OOH campaigns.