Advertiser Platforms
Article | April 5, 2024
Many marketers today don’t know what OOH stands for, though it’s been a highly used marketing medium for decades. Out-of-home advertising consists of anything from billboards, blimps, and bus signage, to street furniture, event advertising, and connected TV, and can be as small as a window poster or the back of a street bench or larger than life, covering a wall or wrapping an entire building. OOH is now being seen as an emerging technology channel, but why?
For starters, during the surge of online advertising over the last 15 years, Facebook and Google ads have seemingly gotten all the attention. Today, many marketing teams have been so focused on online marketing they no longer have much time to spend thinking out-of-the-box. But OOH is upping its game with a technology lift that is allowing marketers to highly target their audiences as well as improve the impact of their online advertising campaigns.
And we’re not just talking about Pepsi and McDonalds. OOH advertising has long been effective for countless brands, known and unknown, and the possibilities are endless. We are seeing everything from wrapping an ice cream truck with your message and parking across the street from an event to highly targeted ads on TV screens in bars, restaurants, banks, and hotels.
People take action after seeing OOH advertisements, doing online searches and visiting websites. In fact, Nielsen’s Out-of-Home Advertising Study 2019 edition reported that 66% of smartphone users took some type of action after seeing a OOH advertisement in the past year, and over four in 10 used online search to look up information. OOH drives more social and digital interactions than any other medium.
If you aren’t in the OOH game, here’s why B2B marketers should be considering it as part of their marketing mix:
1. Build brand trust
According to a survey conducted by Freeman, CMOs, brand managers, and event planners are putting more stake in in-person brand experiences. Billboards and OOH real world advertising are not only for the big brand names. If someone doesn’t know you, you can add significant trust and credibility to your brand as well as add more impact to your online Facebook and Google ads. And, OOH advertising is always there for audiences to see. It’s not invasive, block-able or frustrating as digital ads can be.
2. Hyper-target your audience
Tech advances are allowing marketers to hyper-target out in the real-world. For startups, challenger brands, and anyone looking to target a specific group of people, it’s possible to zero in on the roads people drive on every day for work or the bars and restaurants they go to afterward. Mobile devices pinged at various locations are looked at like inbound links, as if coming from your website. If you want to reach people who work at a certain place, in a certain location, you can identify who’s driving by your billboard.
3. Generate leads
You can then get that feedback, like who’s driving by, of those driving by, who went to your website? What are they searching on? Who converted to a lead?
4. Endless use cases
With technology advancements, the possibilities in OOH are endless – mobile billboards on LED trucks, wall murals, TVs in countless public facilities and arenas, and billboards of all kinds that can be enhanced digitally.
5. OOH advertising is always “on.”
Your OOH advertisement is there 24/7, delivering your message to every passerby during peak target times and all other times, broadening your reach without additional cost. And unlike digital advertising, OOH does not appear and then quickly disappear. It has staying power, displaying your message constantly and consistently around the clock.
6. Stand out at events:
Though in-person conferences and events are coming back to life, the days of “host an event and they will come” are long gone. There is fierce competition for the hearts and minds of attendees. To dominate the competition, OOH is a great way to give you visibility, driving traffic to your event, to your booth, to your website – to network, make real-life connections, and generate leads.
While online advertising has its place, we have taken a break from being creative. OOH allows an opportunity to get back into exercising your creative muscles. The challenge for marketers is to take their years of internet marketing experience and figure out how to create interesting brand experiences offline.
From a tracking standpoint, OOH advertising today is looking more like online advertising. However, instead of tracking people, we are watching places as groups of people move through and pass by billboards or other signage. It’s a powerful “old” tool that marketers can combine with new tools to generate brand awareness and drive inbound interest from highly targeted specs.
During the online advertising surge, while we have been wrapped up in tracking and measuring performance clicks, many companies have under invested in their brand. Plus, when integrated with digital marketing, OOH extends both reach and frequency, allowing you to leverage other marketing, online and offline, for maximum results and ROI. Marketers should now be thinking of OOH as one of their viable performance channels.
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Ad Tech and Martech
Article | May 14, 2024
Creating ad campaigns is a gamble. As advertisers, you are never sure if it was optimized enough, have no idea which micro-targets it resonates with the most, and it could take up to a year to determine the campaign’s sales impact. Market trends change by then. However, AI-powered ad creative can turn things around for you. You will know exactly what aspects of the ad resonate with your target demographic.
“It’s a welcome change for creatives, who find it empowering because they can think more broadly, experiment more, and learn faster,” says David Olesnevich, Head of Product at IBM Watson Advertising
“It’s a welcome change for creatives, who find it empowering because they can think more broadly, experiment more, and learn faster,” says David Olesnevich, Head of Product at IBM Watson Advertising
Let us take a look at what an AI-powered creative can do for your ad campaign:
Instant Optimization
AI-powered creative can be optimized instantly, not just for display ads but also for OTT video ads. You don’t need to spend extra time or resources to scale your optimization efforts.
Multiple Variations
Elements in AI creative can be varied and combined with music tracks, sound effects, voice-overs, scripts, video clips and sequences, hero shots, text overlays, end cards, and calls-to-action.
Easy Scaling
AI-powered creative ad campaigns are easy to scale across sectors for micro-targets defined by demographics, psychographics, life stage, customer journey stage, purchase behavior, and other KPIs like video completion, app installs, site visits, form-filling, purchases/conversions.
Enhanced Targeting
This technology can target your desired demographic based on message resonance. Consumer characteristics that respond to different message element combinations can help create persona profiles.
Brand advertisers like you need to prepare themselves for a cookie-less future with Google phasing out third-party cookies by 2023. Additionally, you need to also take into account Apple ending the IDFA (ID for Advertising). Figuring out micro-targets will get tougher because of these factors. You will have to harness solutions that respect consumer privacy without depending on the traditional advertising identifiers that will no longer remain.
Creative Professionals Can Better Maximize Client ROI
AI-powered creative is a modular and smarter way to develop ads. It takes the guesswork out of advertising with more actionable information to enhance brand campaigns and how they deliver a higher ROI.
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Advertiser Platforms
Article | January 9, 2024
Did you know that there are over three billion smartphone users globally? While browsing through varied content, they see ads relevant to things they explore in their downloaded apps and games. In addition, they receive offers through SMS and see banner ads on websites they visit. These ads are a part of mobile ad campaigns specifically targeting a certain demographic.
Some examples of mobile ads include carousel ads, image and text ads on Facebook, Snapchat filters and ads, video ads on YouTube, notifications from downloaded apps, ads that play between videos or games, and Instagram Story ads.
Why are advertisers so keen on utilizing mobile ad campaigns?
Mobile Ad Campaigns Speak the Revenue Language
Marketers understand the power and impact of mobile phones on users’ lives. As a result, U.S. marketers spent a record 120 billion U.S. dollars on mobile promotion in 2020. (Statista).
Mobile ad campaigns can achieve tremendous results and bring in revenue for you by creating a connection with the user through personalization and by catering to all kinds of online audience on-the-go.
“The mobile device has become our communications hub, our diary, our entertainment portal, our primary source of media consumption, our wallet and our gateway to real-time information tailored to our needs. The revolution is now!”
- Nihal Mehta, Founding General Partner at Eniac Ventures
Mobile Advertising Covers All the Bases
Companies engage in mobile advertising for objectives like lead generation, customer retention through new offers, brand engagement activities like contests, and creating awareness about a product or a service. Mobile ads are the preferred channel for advertising because:
They are cost-effective
Allow geo-targeting
Get a quick response
Can be easily tracked
Let us look at all the tricks that can help you optimize your mobile ad campaigns.
Grab the Users’ Attention
Imagine mobile users aggressively scrolling on their phones. Your ad should make them stop and grab their attention enough to make them read it. The goals of your ad campaigns should be clear. If you are looking to redirect the user to your website or want them to click on the ad, your campaign execution should align with these goals.
Adding Value Through Your Messaging
Pushing your message effectively to the user can ensure the success of your campaign. Your text should be crisp and sharp, interesting yet simple to comprehend. Use popular phrases or buzz words to create a connection with the users.
Don’t Underestimate Visual Appeal
Visual appeal plays a vital role in the way users react to ads. The image size of your ad, the moving flow, and the options for interacting with the ads can impact your ad’s performance. Ensure that you never interrupt your user’s reading flow when they are browsing and that the visuals of your ad are pleasant and appealing to the eye.
Remember, Brevity is the Soul of Wit
The content of your ad should be impressive enough to make the users engage with it. Users will respond to clear copy, visuals and your message’s simplicity. Furthermore, make sure that your landing pages are bug-free, load quickly and relate to your display ad so that the users can form a tangible connection between them.
Wrapping It Up
Mobile advertising helps brands remain connected to their customers around the clock while on the move. It is a personalized and flexible type of advertising that can help advertisers understand the lifestyle of targeted customers to offer them just what they need.
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Social Media Advertising
Article | May 20, 2021
When it comes to PPC advertising, it’s not uncommon to think: Bing Ads vs. Google Ads. On top of that: Which platform has more reach? Is Bing less expensive? Which has more targeting capabilities? Which will produce more conversions and revenue? While many PPC advertisers view the two platforms as competitors, they actually work best hand-in-hand. Google undoubtedly has the majority of the search market, but Bing advertising certainly shouldn’t be forgotten. Rather than Google Ads vs. Bing Ads, marketers should be thinking Google Ads plus Bing Ads.
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