John Wanamaker, the famed early US retailer and marketer, coined the age-old quote, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” On many levels, Wanamaker’s quote still rings true in moving out-of-home (MOOH) advertising today.
Fortunately, this narrative is changing due to advancements in MOOH planning, measurement, and attribution capabilities. As advertising becomes increasingly data driven, we have better tools to prove the effectiveness of ads on vehicles.
For media operators, it’s easier to prove the value of out-of-home to advertisers when it’s quantifiable. Blending the art and science of advertising maximizes the value of every ad dollar spent on your vehicle. From the billions of miles StreetMetrics has measured, here are five things we’ve learned to help operators maximize the value of vehicle inventory in 2023.
#1: Organize your fleet data
Sound measurement is rooted in having confidence in the insights being surfaced, and that confidence is built upon clean vehicle data structure. The outputs are only as reliable as the inputs.
Fleet data is often scattered throughout an organization, and there’s no single source of truth for a given set of vehicles. Disorganization often presents itself during vehicle onboarding and creates ongoing measurement reporting issues if it is not addressed accordingly. This problem can often take weeks or even months to solve.
To make this a non-issue, designate one team to control all fleet details to allow for a single source of dependable data.
#2: Advocate for MOOH-first creative
Advertisers often repurpose creative from other mediums for MOOH; however, strongest results are consistently seen when the creative is simple, legible, designed for the specific vehicle type, and includes a strong call-to-action.
Encourage advertisers to play with the outdoor format specs and ad copy to ensure it grabs the audience’s attention.
#3: Build proprietary benchmarks with aggregated campaign metrics
Operators are routinely asked, ‘How did our campaign perform compared to other advertisers’ campaigns?’ and ‘Should we consider this campaign a success?’
The most assured way to answer these questions is to measure campaigns across all of your advertisers, and then build proprietary benchmarks specifically tailored to your vehicles. By continuously measuring campaigns, valuable insights are surfaced month over month, quarter over quarter, and year over year.
The best time to begin creating internal benchmarks was yesterday, the next best time is today.
#4: Turn on attribution to gain deeper insights
Attribution is being adopted at a fast clip in the industry, and rightly so. The advantage of attribution is clear: post-campaign performance reporting is a key tool for winning a larger share of an advertiser’s marketing mix.
Campaigns that include a higher number of vehicles and have at least a 4-week flight have the highest likelihood of achieving statistically significant results. Other important factors include the market and the objective.
As you’re planning upcoming campaigns with advertisers, identify a campaign(s) that are a candidate(s) for appending attribution reporting, speak with your measurement partner(s) regarding campaign setup recommendations, and move forward with an attribution study if it will benefit your advertiser.
#5: Embrace the results & optimize accordingly
Positive campaign performance is ideal, yet powerful insights can be learned from less than optimal results.
If a campaign failed to reach a desired performance threshold, look for explanations. Were there enough vehicles to achieve your impression goal? Did the creative catch your eye and have a strong call-to-action? Was there good/bad weather during the measurement period?
Embracing the results allows for continual ad-optimization, increasing performance over time.
Moving out-of-home forward, together
As moving out-of-home advertising becomes increasingly data driven, we hope these 5 best practices help you maximize the value of every ad dollar on your vehicles.
Onward!
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About StreetMetrics
StreetMetrics is a media measurement company serving the out-of-home advertising industry. Our planning, measurement, and attribution solutions help media operators prove the return on investment for their out-of-home ad campaigns. For more information, visit www.streetmetrics.com or follow us on LinkedIn.
