Data-driven advertising will be a big theme at Advertising Week 2019, and nowhere is the data revolution more prevalent than in out-of-home (OOH) advertising. For the past few years, the OOH industry has been developing data-driven solutions to help brands incorporate rich mobile location intelligence to reach, amplify and measure campaigns among target audiences. Now, sophisticated Direct to Consumer (DTC) businesses are borrowing this marketing strategy to help build awareness and drive measurable outcomes.
Online marketing can be a fantastic means of customer acquisition in the near-term, but less so at growing and building a brand. And at some point, a brand must focus on increasing reach to achieve a bigger share of the pie. With e-commerce still only representing about 10% of the entire U.S. retail market, a key question for “online-only” DTC brands: How do we engage consumers in the offline world and compete for legacy retail dollars?
Today’s OOH solutions give DTC brands the ability to leverage the offline, real-world power of OOH. Clear Channel Outdoor RADAR, the industry’s first-to-market, integrated suite of audience planning, amplification and measurement solutions offers brands a unique way to engage their online audiences in an offline environment, enhancing their lead generation and brand building effectiveness.
One of OOH’s great strengths is its proven ability to build brands by generating awareness and engaging consumers in the real world. We see this by how effective OOH is in driving store visitation conversion, and how the combination of OOH and mobile advertising increases brand awareness and digital ROI.
What OOH provides digital brands is the connective tissue to extend the conversation into the real world; and making them less reliant on a sometimes stagnating digital-only media strategy. Incorporating the best practices from digital, OOH is moving past measurable outcomes taking campaign learnings and insights and sharing them with clients, so they can optimize their ads and drive even greater impact of their OOH media campaigns. With RADARSync™, Clear Channel’s latest innovation, a brand can integrate their own first party data right into the campaign architecture and measurement, driving more ROI to a brand’s OOH campaign.
The best DTC brands like Everlane, Warby Parker, and Casper have cracked the code on making the transition from online customer acquisition and sales to engagement with consumers in the physical world by featuring their products in showrooms. Using their own first party data, Everlane understands their customers, their behaviors and travel patterns, which allows them to create an experience, like pop-up stores, that appeal to their returning customers. OOH solutions, like CCO RADAR, can also help brands reach customers in the real-world and drive them to these locations and other experiential activations.
This week, I’ll share how Clear Channel and our industry peers are working with DTC brands to help them reach consumers in the real-world in measurable, impactful ways. These are exciting times, and I hope you’ll join me in the conversation at Advertising Week on Sept 25.