Interviews, insight & analysis on digital media & marketing

Programmatic OOH Predictions: Alys Donnelly, Head of Programmatic, Kinetic Worldwide

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NDA has partnered with VIOOH for a series of articles exploring OOH advertising and the role programmatic technologies will play in its development.

As part of this project, we spoke to industry leaders to hear their predictions for DOOH and programmatic OOH in 2021.

Next up is Alys Donnelly, Head of Programmatic at Kinetic Worldwide.

What are the biggest opportunities, and challenges, for programmatic in OOH in 2021?

We think there’s a real opportunity to increase the amount of inventory that is available programmatically over the coming year. Working with and encouraging more media owners to understand how programmatic could work for them will be key in this part of the ecosystem developing.

Growing the range of data sources that can be used to tailor creative or trigger creative delivery in certain contexts is also a real opportunity for the coming year (social listening / news triggers etc). This will offer clients real agility in delivery and make the programmatic OOH offering stand out.

Cross-channel activations are another real opportunity for the coming year. Being able to use DOOH in conjunction with audio, display or social activations is a great way for our channel to embrace new and emerging opportunities.

Given the promising news around vaccine programmes rolling out over the coming months, increasing audiences being seen in the OOH space will make the developments in the programmatic OOH space even more valuable.

How has COVID impacted your planning for the use of programmatic advertising in OOH in the next 6 months?

Covid has affected the OOH world this year in a number of ways. In a rapidly changing Covid world, one of the key elements for us has been to emphasise the importance of our Journeys DMP in allowing us to understand audience movement in near real time and audience preferences in changing contexts. This has added real value to our campaigns (both classic and programmatic) and has allowed us to plan much more specifically and appropriately around changing Covid guidelines.

Do you intend to decrease or increase investment in programmatic OOH in 2021?

We think there’ll be an increase in investment in programmatic OOH in 2021. Both from the perspective of media bought and sold and in terms of investment in technology platforms and data. We think the momentum built up this year (despite Covid!) will continue into 2021.

However, there is an important balance to be maintained here with classic OOH vs programmatic OOH. No-one is advocating a wholesale shift from one to the other, as classic OOH delivers powerful broadcast scale, in a trusted public environment and builds brands in a way that is hard to match with other channels. The key is matching the right brief with the right route to market.

What was your favourite programmatic OOH campaign this year?

We ran a campaign for a high end supermarket earlier this year that combined both specific audience targeting as well as DCO to highlight where a customer’s nearest store was.
The continual updating of data within our Journeys platform allowed us to be as accurate and up to date as possible in identifying and targeting this niche audience, optimising the campaign on the fly.

The combination of audience data and DCO allowed us to be present for the right audience in the right moment, as well as providing helpful information to the user in guiding them to a store of interest for them. This provided both value for the client and value for the customer on the street.