In theory, the advent of Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) promised to revolutionise the OOH media landscape by combining the emotional power and killer impact of traditional OOH formats and placements with the precision targeting and inherent measurability of digital advertising. In practice, however, it was far from smooth sailing, with common paint points around the fragmentation of inventory across media owners and a subsequent lack of standardised measurement. It seemed like consolidation of available inventory and the ability to plan and activate from a single platform could be the silver bullet advertisers were longing for, but was anyone up to such a mammoth task? Enter Google.
Google announced on August 25th that DOOH can now be bought programmatically through DV360, marking the first ever large-scale consolidation of DOOH inventory in a DSP. They have been busy in the background integrating global inventory from exchanges including Hivestack, Magnite, PlaceExchange, Ströer SSP, VIOOH and Vistar Media – and through that, the thousands of sites owned and operated by ClearChannel, Intersection, JCDecaux, Lamar and Ströer. Advertisers can now plan, activate, and optimise DOOH in real-time from a single point of entry, tackling everything from strategy to reporting in one place. To address marketers’ concerns about measurement, publishers provide DV360 with an impression multiplier, which will estimate the number of people who have seen an ad based on advanced data modelling. DV360 vets all DOOH publishers to ensure that they follow industry-recognised measurement methodologies, meaning measurement will be as accurate and as consistent as possible.
With this monumental update the most common barriers to activating DOOH have been whipped away – and brands are now in the position to test programmatic buying with an ease that has never been seen before. ASOS were the flagship brand to test DOOH through DV360. They aimed to build brand awareness and drive users to their site by targeting heavy footfall areas on retail highstreets across the UK and US. Delivering a whopping 22 million impressions, they conducted a geo experiment to measure uplift and observed a 14% increase in brand awareness and 22% increase in brand consideration in exposed areas. Other brands will no doubt follow suit, tapping into the broad inventory and contextual data signals now available to begin testing in earnest. If you’re interested in scoping out what this could look like for you and your brand, speak to your existing account team at Merkle or reach out to the Strategy & Planning alias to begin discussions.
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