The Importance of Location Data in Out-of-Home Advertising

Marketers are always looking for the most flexible and mobile tools that will allow them to quickly adapt advertising strategies to consumer needs. People are tired of pervasive online advertising and tend to pay more attention to outdoor ads. Therefore, OOH can now be seen on kiosks, high-rise buildings, taxis, gas stations, and in many unexpected places. There are many more billboards in the world, including digital ones, and it becomes harder to track the quirks of each one.

Another prominent trend of recent years is an unprecedented surge of interest in automated purchases of outdoor advertising. With the advent of automated platforms, creating and distributing targeted ads has become a lot easier. Programmatic OOH ad spend is expected to reach $558 million in 2023 — a 13.1% increase over 2022 and almost double what it was in 2019. Automated digital screen ad spend will make up 91.1% of all digital screen ad spend in 2023. Almost nobody is personally inspecting ad spaces anymore.

But if the purchase is automated, it's quite difficult to check whether the location is suitable for your brand. If you weren't there physically, it's hard to imagine what is there and how it all looks. That is why the main outdoor advertising operators are now trying to collect detailed information about all the features of the location and provide it to their customers — so that they can run successful campaigns and continue to rent ad spaces. Efficient data collection separates the industry-leading OOH operators from the ones lagging behind.

 

What Is Included in Location Data

Location data for out-of-home advertising typically includes:

• the geographical coordinates of a particular digital billboard or screen;
• information on the surrounding area, such as the type of neighborhood, the level of foot or vehicular traffic;
• demographic information about the audience likely to be exposed to the ad.

In addition to GPS coordinates, location data may also include contextual information such as time of day, weather conditions, and nearby points of interest. This contextual data can help advertisers tailor their messaging to the specific audience and environment, increasing ad ROI.

Other types of location data may include user information from mobile devices, such as user's location and browsing history. This can be used to create targeted ad campaigns that reach users who are most likely to be interested in a particular product or service based on their previous online activity and physical location.

Digital technologies are constantly evolving, constantly reaching new heights. Some modern DOOH platforms are now also able to provide:

 

Streams of geospatial data

This is, for example, geosocial data (i.e. what is happening in a specific community), data on people's mobility, their movements during the day. Billboard at 8 am and billboard at 12 noon are two different billboards.

The collected data can then be used to run hyper-targeted location campaigns. Advertisers see where more people pass, where ads will have more visibility. It becomes much easier to choose new locations if you already had one that "worked" (this can be determined by reachability and measuring sales dynamics, I will explain this in detail some other time). Operators can perform geospatial analysis to pinpoint locations where companies can expect similar results after deployment.

 

Maps of relevant users

Using information collected from mobile operators and Wi-Fi radars, and combining it with databases from telecom operators, cash equipment operators, advertising platforms and various Internet services, companies can determine where their target audience is currently located. You can check for gender, age, income level, and even interests.

Sometimes this can reveal unexpected locations that do not come to mind on their own. For example, we had a case where one area was filled with young people who loved to party, however the neighboring area was frequented by older couples. It is clear that these two groups like completely different products and need a completely different approach. But without the collected data, this peculiarity would not have been known, and grannies would watch billboard ads about chips and beer goggles.

 

View cones and view distances

It's not just about how many people (and what kind of people) walk past the billboard. But also about how many people can actually see it. This, surprisingly, depends on a variety of factors. View distance, view cones, possible obfuscations.

For example, if the billboard is intended for car drivers, you need to consider at what point their roof covers the viewing angle. Truckers have a completely different vertical field of view. When it rains, people covered with umbrellas can't see what is above them, at a certain angle.

All this can be considered when choosing a location, depending on your requests. The easiest way is to personally go to the place, but if this is not possible, browse locations on Google Street View, or ask for data from OOH platforms. Some DOOH operators are also starting to offer location data taking into account these parameters.

 

How Location Data Is Changing Traditional OOH

Enriched with all location data, information about device MAC addresses allows companies to understand the specifics and needs of the audience that can be viewing their ad. Data on financial transactions, internet consumption, and online behavior helps color the map so that advertisers can see how various neighborhoods differ on a spectrum of more than a dozen key characteristics.

Simply put, if you have relevant location data, you can place outdoor ads in all the optimal places. And also adapt them to your audience's needs. This allows you to greatly increase the effectiveness of outdoor advertising. We had cases where efficiency increased by 243% just from changing the location. This is not only us: a study by Forrester found that the use of mobile location data improves conversion rates by an average of 60% and improves the ROI of advertising campaigns by an average of 68%.

 

Having location data also allows you to calculate campaign coverage. OOH advertisers can take a future-forward approach by having insights into the potential reach of their media plan before it is actually launched. This data also allows companies to adjust an already launched advertising campaign depending on the circumstances. For example, they can choose to show their ad when the concentration of the target audience located next to the digital screen reaches a certain level. Or to show a longer commercial if there is a traffic jam nearby and drivers are able to watch it in its entirety.

Overall, there are 4 main reasons why location data is so crucial in out-of-home advertising:

1. Targeted Ads. By using location data, companies can design their ads to target specific audiences in particular locations. This increases the chances of reaching the right people at the right time, and usually leads to an increase in conversion rates.
2. Increased Relevance. Location data helps advertisers create more relevant and personalized ads that resonate with the target audience. Ads tailored to local culture, interests, and issues capture the attention of potential customers more easily.
3. Better ROI. Location data helps advertisers optimize their ad spend by focusing on areas where their target audience is most likely to be. Marketing teams can target customers based on factors such as proximity to a store, upcoming events in the area, age, gender, interests, etc. This leads to a much better return on investment (ROI) for the advertising campaign.
4. Real-Time Optimization. With access to real-time location data, advertisers can make adjustments to their campaigns on the fly. This means they can optimize their ads for specific time of day, weather conditions, or other contextual factors to maximize their impact. See the famous Netflix France "GIF" ad campaign for an inspiring example.

 

Using the full range of data about its audience and available OOH locations, any company, for example, a clothing retailer, can effectively plan their advertising campaign. They know where and when people will go to the markets, what fast food places are visited the most frequently, and what hotels the travelers they want to engage often stay. They can rent specific ad spaces in the targeted areas that will maximize cumulative effect. And if these are digital screens, their ads can only be run at peak hours (for their audience and this particular location). As a result, costs are greatly reduced and ad performance is increased.

Location data from modern programmatic platforms allows companies to make informed choices and enhance their OOH campaigns with real-world intelligence. This is like having a spy on the ground, checking what people want, where they are, and how well you can perform. It's a powerful tool for out-of-home advertisers, helping them reach the right audience at the right time and place.

As Forrester, other agencies, and our own experience have shown, outdoor advertising without location data tends to be only about half as effective.