Interviews, insight & analysis on digital media & marketing

Programmatic OOH Predictions: Benoit Dejean, Programmatic Media & Partnership Director at Croud

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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 Benoit Dejean, Programmatic Media & Partnership Director at Croud.

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

The biggest opportunity for digital out-of-home has been its continuous growth that we’ve seen in the market. DOOH is gradually taking on more and more of the market share vs the traditional OOH buy.

In 2020 the US DOOH ad spend accounted for 30% of the total US OOH ad spend, it is forecasted to be around 42% by 2023. Another opportunity that could also be seen as challenges for some advertisers is the way DOOH has evolved to be more data-driven.

This means the planning of DOOH must change to account for the increase of digital screens with the ability to connect with various APIs to make OOH more connected and personalised.

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

We believe programmatic OOH is not getting enough traction, there have been so many developments being made, one of which is how OOH supply sources such VIOOH integrate natively with various omnichannel and OOH-specific DSPs which makes programmatic OOH widely available to not only the large advertisers but also smaller advertisers who want a piece of the OOH market share.

What programmatic OOH brings to the mix is a different approach, no longer looking at OOH as a standalone media buy driving awareness metrics but now a fully integrated part of the overall digital media mix using third-party tools to measure the effectiveness and the incrementality of the activity.

For me the biggest opportunity around why advertisers should invest in programmatic OOH is the ability to quickly adapt and make changes on the go, without having to sign another IO. We can dial in or out spend in specific locations or screens based on real-time data and not be committed to high minimum spend requirements.

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

2020 has seen an overall decrease in Out of Home, in the UK a 52% decrease was reported in Q2 which was to be expected based on the reduction in movement throughout the UK. We had a few campaigns planned during that time that were understandably cancelled, however, but we took the opportunity to educate our clients on the benefits of programmatic OOH and how using data and OOH placements can really make a difference even during a national lockdown and we should look at OOH in a different way than we previously did.

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

We plan to increase our investment in 2021, at Croud we’ve invested in our programmatic OOH offering for our clients.

We have partnered with leading tech and measurement companies to ensure our clients see the value of programmatic OOH as part of their overall digital marketing mix.

What was your favourite programmatic OOH campaign this year?

One of my favourite digital out-of-home campaigns this year was the Pepsi MAX bus shelter activation.

It was just a brilliant use of creativity and making users at its core was a great execution.

If I think of one of the great programmatic OOH campaign activation, Uber used the TFL API connection to target digital screens near tube stations that were operating with severe delays, another great use of data that might not have been possible if not run programmatically.