JCDecaux and New Digital Age (NDA) have partnered to stage the Programmatic DOOH Live Awards on 24 April 2024 in London. The Awards will feature a unique judging process, with a panel of expert judges assessing the entries in front of a live audience.
Ahead of the event, NDA caught with up the judges to get a feel for their personal take on the market for programmatic DOOH in 2024. Here, Dan Larden, Head of Media at ISBA, shares his thoughts on the latest developments in out-of-home advertising…
What do you see as the primary benefits of programmatic activation in OOH?
For me, the primary benefit of programmatic activation in DOOH is the potential for hyperlocal targeting and the ability to incorporate it into your overall marketing mix. That’s going to become increasingly important over the next few years.
There’s a huge opportunity within out-of-home and programmatic out-of-home for location based targeting right now, predominantly because the ability to do location targeting well in many other digital channels (such as programmatic display and social) is disappearing due to the reduction of signals. That creates a big opportunity for OOH to make a resurgence with accurate location targeting at a postcode level.
Also, from a measurement perspective, DOOH provides marketers and retailers with the ability to pinpoint where they’ve spent ad money and see any uplifts in those areas based on store footfall and web conversions.
Are operational silos within agencies and trading desks leading to programmatic DOOH falling between the cracks in terms of ad budgets?
In some cases, yes. Prior to joining ISBA, I spent the majority of my career at a digital-only agency. We added OOH as a channel when it became programmatic, so we found it quite easy to apply our existing setup to buying OOH. By contrast, I think there is probably still a challenge for the network agencies to take their traditional media planning and buying expertise and move that into channels like programmatic DOOH. There is definitely a danger that DOOH can fall halfway between the digital team and the traditional OOH planning team.
Also, where we’ve seen a big growth in brands in-housing things like testing, search and social, we haven’t seen the same level of in-housing in relation to programmatic and certainly not in relation to OOH. The result is that, yes, OOH is sometimes falling between the cracks of who is actually buying DOOH inventory.
Do you think a dedicated awards event for the OOH industry is a good idea?
Yes, it’s a great idea. I’m super excited about the format as well, as I think it will provide a lot more awareness to how these campaigns have been planned and bought, which is really valuable. The ability to actually go a little bit deeper and for the entrants to be on stage to give us their insights is something fresh for an industry awards event like this.
Find out more about the award categories and entry requirements here.
