Announcing Real-Time Inventory Availability with Clear Channel Outdoor

To many marketers, the past 2 years have felt like an ongoing crisis management exercise.  Thanks to a global pandemic – and the ensuing social impacts and supply chain disruptions – marketers have been forced to embrace a new level of marketing agility which will almost certainly become the new normal. Slow, manual, outdated processes will be forced to speed up in order to keep up.  And nowhere is the need for speed more obvious than in the old RFP process common in out-of-home (OOH) advertising…

That’s why AdQuick has invested in bringing real-time planning to OOH.  And we are excited to announce a first-of-its-kind integration with Clear Channel Outdoor, which will enable unprecedented access to real-time OOH inventory availability data.  Ultimately, this means more accurate data, even faster campaign planning & execution, and increased flexibility for campaign optimization.

Read on to learn more…

The Problem with RFPs

Historically, OOH advertisers have had to rely on an RFP process that included manually requesting proposals from media owners with dozens of revisions as media availability changed. This can take weeks even if everything runs smoothly, and it can derail your entire OOH media plan if you hit a few roadblocks.  Let’s run through a quick example…

Imagine you’re a hard-working marketer planning a huge new product launch campaign.  You diligently prepare a comprehensive RFP, send it out to dozens of vendors, and anxiously wait to receive detailed proposals outlining available out-of-home ad units.  A week passes by and you finally receive all your proposals. Happily, you realize one of them includes exactly what you’d hoped to find: a handful of stunning, high-impact billboards  – and a few others that are perfectly positioned to reach your target audience. These, you decide, will be the cornerstone of the entire buy, and “option” the units with the vendors, kicking off a two-day hold… Now you just need to convince leadership to shell out a few more bucks.  

You ask your creative department to create a mock design for a few of the oddly-shaped spectaculars. They are busy, but they owe you a favor, so they deliver within a couple of days. Then you craft a detailed argument outlining exactly why these units are absolute must-haves – complete with the beautiful new mocks – and book a meeting with your bosses.  A few days later, you secure the incremental budget. You eagerly reach back out to the vendors to book the campaign – only to learn that your cornerstone ad units are all gone! In the time it took you to get approval, the units were sold to another advertiser – leaving you with a gaping hole in your media plan and in an awkward position with your leadership team.

As this nightmare scenario illustrates, the old RFP process is deeply flawed and doesn’t align with the realities of modern marketing.  Marketers need access to accurate inventory availability data every step of the way – from planning to execution to optimization. This is especially true when you’re dealing with an out-of-home ad market like the one we see today, with limited supply and skyrocketing demand.

The Modern Solution: Real-Time Availability Data

Now, what if you could just log into a platform, apply a few intuitive filters and data layers, and – BAM! – see everything that’s available immediately, in real-time…? This level of fully-transparent, real-time availability data would be a gamechanger, no?

In some cases, such as those initiatives for which you already know exactly what you want, you could avoid the RFP process entirely – shaving weeks off of your timeline. (After all, if you can already see, in real-time, everything that’s available, you don’t need to take the time to ask about availability!)

Of course, there will always still be some campaigns for which you want to brainstorm with media owners and OOH specialists… and that’s one important process that an RFP facilitates.  In this case, an OOH media buying platform featuring real-time availability data would allow you to level-up these conversations – by focusing on your business goals, campaign KPIs, and the ideal OOH media strategy to help you achieve both.  (Here at AdQuick, our team of OOH experts loves that they’re able to focus on strategy over the minutiae of campaign execution!)

Either way, real-time inventory availability data provides the degree of transparency that modern marketers require to execute agile campaigns. It allows marketers to:

• receive RFPs faster,
• maintain an accurate, real-time understanding of which inventory is available,
• see when inventory is in high demand and moving fast, so they can manage internal processes accordingly,
• optimize their campaigns with ease, and
• make media planning decisions faster.

…sounds pretty good, right?  We think so too.  That’s why we’ve made direct API integrations enabling real-time inventory availability a top priority.  It’s good for our customers and good for the industry.

In fact, AdQuick has direct API integrations and more real-time availability data than any other OOH buying platform.  And our access to real-time availability data keeps growing, as we build out new integrations with some of the biggest OOH media owners in the industry, including Clear Channel Outdoor…

The AdQuick + Clear Channel Partnership

AdQuick and Clear Channel Outdoor, one of the world’s largest outdoor advertising companies, have partnered to provide AdQuick customers with real-time inventory availability data to better align with the real time decisions marketers are making in media today.  Modern marketers can now plan, optimize, and execute outdoor campaigns more precisely and quicker than ever before.

“The past two years have changed the pace of the OOH marketplace,” said Matthew O’Connor, CEO of AdQuick. “Today, marketers must move even faster and embrace new levels of marketing agility. By partnering with Clear Channel Outdoor Americas, we aim to provide marketers with real-time data about media inventory instantly while empowering them to make OOH planning and buying decisions with up-to-the-minute precision.”

How It Works

This new capability is made possible through a direct API integration between AdQuick and Clear Channel Outdoor, enabling automated workflow processes and improved connectivity overall.  Plus, this innovation helps to further integrate OOH into the digital media buying ecosystem.

“Our partnership with AdQuick demonstrates Clear Channel’s commitment to using innovative technology and data to enable advertisers to make OOH planning decisions in real time or activate on these plans for immediate messaging to the consumers,” said Erika Goldberg, Chief of Business Operations, CCOA. “Our focus remains on meeting our customers’ evolving business needs and that includes developing technology-driven solutions that enable marketers and advertisers to make informed decisions about their media planning processes while swiftly executing OOH campaigns, and this partnership will enable that.”

The integration is currently live and available to AdQuick customers today.

Let AdQuick Help Modernize Your OOH Planning Workflow

The pace of marketing has sped up exponentially. Over the past two years, marketers have had to contend with sudden supply shortfalls, and shifting recommendations for social distancing – both of which require immediate adjustments to advertising and media plans.  And the old approach to planning with manual RFPs and outdated information doesn’t align with the new marketing reality.

In a world where speed is a competitive advantage, AdQuick’s lightning-fast OOH planning and execution – including real-time inventory availability – helps our customers win again and again. As OOH advertising experiences skyrocketing demand with limited supply, real-time inventory availability data allows AdQuick customers to receive RFPs faster, maintain an accurate understanding of available inventory, and ultimately make media planning decisions more effectively.

Interested in learning more about how AdQuick modernizes the out-of-home buying process? Schedule a call with one of our OOH experts, today.