Data-driven digital outdoor drives effectiveness up 17%

Client marketers who embrace data-driven “contextually relevant messaging” in their digital out of home campaigns – which takes into account location, timing and pertinency – achieve an average +17% uplift in campaign effectiveness, according a new neuroscience study into how consumers react to outdoor activity.

“The Moments of Truth” study was commissioned by outdoor specialists Clear Channel, JCDecaux UK and Posterscope, used a combination of three research techniques dubbed “research to reality”, which measure brain response, eye tracking research to measure ad recall, and test and control sales uplift studies to understand how dynamic DOOH drives direct sales response.

Key findings reveal that consumer brain response is 18% higher when viewing relevant content in digital OOH campaigns, which in turn leads to a 17% increase in consumers’ spontaneous advertising recall, and ultimately proving that dynamic digital OHH campaigns can deliver a 16% sales uplift. When combined, these findings give an overall campaign effectiveness uplift of +17%.

With DOOH now accounting for 53% of the sector’s revenue (according to the Outsmart PWC UK OOH Advertising Revenue report), following increased investment from both advertisers and media owners, the research has been designed to inform and educate the marketing industry on how to maximise DOOH performance and consumer response.

The three stages of the research uncovered additional insights into consumer response to dynamic OOH.

Brain response
Conducted by Neuro-Insight, this element was aimed at expanding understanding of advertising at relevant moments, and why content featuring individual dynamic data triggers, such as location or live updates, is more effective at driving increased levels of brain response.

Using the established neuroscience technique of Steady State Topography (SST), the research measured the brain responses of more than 160 people who were exposed to content across numerous different brand categories on a full-size portrait DOOH screen and revealed brands achieved an average +12% increase in brain response when displaying a ‘brand’ or ‘product’ communication at the most relevant moment.

Brands also saw an average +18% increase in brain response when displaying content that was relevant using either the location, the weather, the time or a live update as the stimulus trigger.

However, the combination of the both triggered an average +32% increase in brain response when displaying most relevant content at the most relevant moment.

Advertising recall
Conducted by Research Bods using its online webcam eye tracking software, over 280 respondents viewed walk-through footage of a shopping mall with six DOOH screens, each featuring a different brand’s advertising. This part of the research demonstrated that advertising at relevant moments and with relevant content attracted attention and improved brand and creative ratings.

Notably, there was a +6% average increase in time spent viewing at either the most relevant moment or applying the most relevant dynamic content and a +17% average increase in spontaneous ad awareness for relevant ads.
Finally, brands witnessed a +6% average increase in creative rating, in metrics including consideration, recommendation, trust and preference.

Sales response
This aspect of the research explored whether applying the most relevant content and moment in the real world, drove a consumer action versus the traditional singular DOOH creative approach. It revealed a +16% increase in sales when applying a dynamic OOH campaign versus a control of no OOH. This is versus a benchmark of seeing a +9% average increase in sales when applying a traditional singular creative message campaign vs. no OOH.

Posterscope managing director Glen Wilson said: “The ability to deploy truly dynamic content across thousands of high quality, networked digital screens is probably the most significant step forward for OOH since the arrival of those digital screens well over a decade ago.

“But its potential is still significantly under-estimated, with media spend on dynamically-enabled digital OOH representing only about 8% of all DOOH campaigns. We’ve always believed in the power of dynamic and seen amazing results from those clients that have embraced it. This research proves beyond doubt that dynamic campaigns work, delivering on effectiveness and engagement, but perhaps most importantly, generating an uplift in sales.”

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