Optimizing for Conversions, Not Impressions: The Shape of Programmatic DOOH Advertising to Come

A personal note to all my fellow marketers before we jump into the good stuff:

I joined AdQuick almost two years ago with the hope that we'd build a software product that enabled digitally-native, revenue-focused marketers like myself to use the out-of-home advertising medium as a performance channel – with a familiar, user experience and the ability to measure conversions events for any type of business.

I already knew that 0ut-of-home advertising was a valuable marketing channel before joining the team.

Marketers at companies with brick and mortar locations have used this medium as an indispensable part of their programs for decades.

They figured it out – running experiments by placing OOH media outside of or on the way to their physical locations and measuring the incremental lift in that store's sales.

But what about internet businesses without storefronts?

There are so many variables that can impact an OOH campaign's effectiveness.

We made it our goal to give marketers the data and insights they need to have confidence in the format and drive revenue for their business.

In retrospect, I wondered how long it would take to get closer to achieving parity between the OOH and digital advertising formats, and whether I'd have the opportunity to share this post with you.

Well friends, that day is today.

It's Launch Day

Almost a year ago, our team started building not one, but two new software products designed to narrow the gap between out-of-home and digital advertising with marketers like you and me in mind.

We analyzed thousands of sales calls, interviewed hundreds of prospective and existing customers, identified their most common pain points in using OOH or their objections against using the medium, and teamed up with industry-leading companies in the out-of-home advertising space to build something truly special:

The AdQuick Programmatic product offers users a familiar, modern experience that's very similar to the digital advertising platforms that they use in their day-to-day.

The AdQuick Attribution product offers a sleek dashboard that shows users how their out-of-home advertising campaign is performing against user-defined conversion events.

We believe that these two products, designed to work together, will radically transform how we perceive and use out-of-home advertising as part of the marketing mix.

We couldn't have built these products by ourselves.

On behalf of the AdQuick team I'd like to thank:

• our amazing customers
• my fellow marketers, at companies large and small, across all industries that helped shape these two products
• our trusted media owner partners on the platform that we work hand-in-hand with every single day
• our supply-side platform partners that helped make this all possible

We welcome you to check it out and hope you enjoy this new experience as much as we did building it.

Chris Gadek
Growth & Marketing @ AdQuick

P.S. Crafting the following post was challenging given that many marketers have not purchased out-of-home media. It seeks to shed some light on the programmatic space to date, highlight the importance of attribution, and share some product features that we think will excite you.

The Shape of Programmatic DOOH Advertising to Come

If you're a digitally-native, performance-driven marketer like me that wished digital out-of-home (DOOH) media buys were as simple, smart, seamless, and measurable as all our other digital media buys, then we’ve got some good news for you:

the wait is over.

Now you can target, buy, measure, pause, and optimize DOOH advertising campaigns in a matter of clicks.

Even better, we have partnered and integrated with industry-leading DOOH SSPs to give you unparalleled access to the best DOOH media inventory, all in a single platform.

This is a true first for the out-of-home industry—and something that will likely change how you view OOH advertising from this point forward.

It’s much bigger than simply adding a centralized, programmatic layer to a predominantly decentralized digital advertising marketplace.

And while access to inventory and ease of buying are certainly some of the best perks of DOOH’s shift to programmatic, your ability to target, optimize, and measure DOOH inventory, in ways you probably never thought imaginable for this medium, is what really stands out here.

This is going to unlock the true value of OOH advertising for you just as much as it’s going to make you rethink the role that OOH can and should play in your broader marketing mix.

Not convinced yet?

Keep reading.

It's pretty rad.

The industry has been moving towards programmatic DOOH

Let’s be honest, it was only a matter of time until out-of-home advertising got its much deserved time in the programmatic spotlight.

It really just came down to when it would happen.

Being able to access DOOH advertising inventory from across multiple SSPs in a single place— to enable better and more effective campaign planning at scale—has been virtually unthinkable in the out-of-home industry since ummm... forever.

In fact, if you asked any OOH media buyer or seller to put the words “centralized” and “out-of-home” in a single sentence, you’d get blank stares.

And stepping further into uncharted waters, being able to bid on that inventory in real-time, just as you do with all of your other digital advertising investments, to maximize advertising budgets and tap into only the best digital inventory—based on your targeting parameters, your ideal audience, and your defined conversion goals—has probably always seemed like a pipe dream, too.

But the industry, as you well know, has been changing a lot over the last few years.

And as more digital out-of-home space has become available for advertisers to tap into, the need to centralize the buying and selling of those ad units has become a growing priority for advertisers.

But this is really just one piece of this puzzle.

Attribution as the new DOOH frontier

This is what really makes our programmatic DOOH solution such a big deal:

It brings an entirely new level of measurement and assessment of advertising value to the DOOH space—something that’s been seriously lacking for years.

People have always just assumed that DOOH advertising’s primary role was to serve as an awareness-generating tactic within broader, multi-channel marketing campaigns.

Despite advances in audience targeting capabilities, measurement has historically been a challenge for the medium.

In fact, advertisers have never really seen OOH as a viable performance marketing channel, especially when it comes to attribution.

The good news: our programmatic solution and its complimentary attribution dashboard changes this entire dynamic.

For the first time, advertisers (and their agencies) will have access to unit-level exposure (impressions) and user-defined conversion events for DOOH ad campaigns.

Not only does this mean you’ll be able to understand in near-real-time which digital billboards are performing the best in any given market,

but—and this is really the biggest game-changer here—

you’ll also be able to connect the dots between actual foot traffic, mobile, and web traffic (i.e. conversion events) and that unit-level exposure.

You heard that right:

we can now provide you with sophisticated data and analytics to show what DOOH ad units are doing to drive real-time consumer actions.

That is a big deal!

The AdQuick Programmatic DOOH DSP

On top of all of this awesomeness, we’re now making it really easy for you to plan and deploy DOOH ad campaigns in ways you never thought possible.

Here’s what our new programmatic solution brings to the table:

Easy-to-use Interface

Not all platforms are created equal.

Some are powerful but are seriously lacking in the UX department.

Others are really pretty to look at, but don’t do enough to get the job done.

We’re pretty confident that we’ve brought together the best of both worlds.

Our intuitive and user-friendly interface makes it easy—and incredibly visual—to plan and execute DOOH ad campaigns in a matter of clicks.

We’ve combined the latest DSP technologies with industry-leading UX best practices to create a programmatic DOOH marketplace that you’ll actually want to use often.

Unparalleled DOOH Inventory Options

You now have access to 330,000+ DOOH screens via AdQuick’s multiple integrations with industry-leading SSPs like Broadsign Reach and Vistar Media.

This will only continue to grow as we bring more top-tier SSPs into the fold, creating the world’s go-to programmatic DOOH marketplace.

Geospatial Audiences

Not only can you reach and engage audiences more effectively with hyper-targeted precision, but now you can also understand how consumers are interacting or taking action on the ads they see in real-time thanks to our access to 500+ million location pings that track movement in relationship to digital screens.

Analytics

For the first time, DOOH finally has it's turn to become a powerful channel for both brand and performance marketers alike (as well as the agencies that represent them).

Fueled by our advanced analytics platform, you will now be able to measure campaign effectiveness—especially in terms of driving conversions or success events across —with an entirely new level of precision and see it in a dashboard like you do in AdWords or Facebook Ad Manager.

Take your DOOH campaigns to the next level

We’re so excited to show you our new programmatic DOOH solution that we could literally keep on talking about it for hours.

But we won't. We imagine that you'd probably prefer to login and start exploring on your own.

It’s one thing to talk about how this solution will revolutionize the DOOH advertising marketplace; it’s another thing to see it in action.

And once you’ve had a first-hand opportunity to run your own experiments with the flexibility and targeting capabilities that digital ad platforms provide - we think you will look at out-of-home advertising from a different perspective from here on out.

It's an incredible time to be a marketer.