There is no getting away from the fact that 2020 has been a year of great change. Digital acceleration has increased in many industries, and it’s fair to say that changing consumer behaviour is impacting the marketing mix.

The endless fragmentation of media channels has complexified the process of ad planning far beyond the comparatively straightforward methods used just ten or fifteen years ago, albeit methods that often entailed separate teams for each media.

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Today, media agencies and advertisers have a far more challenging task on their hands as they strive to cut through the noise and bring their messaging to consumers in an impactful, memorable, co-ordinated and ultimately effective way. To this end, the digitisation of traditional channels that has been accelerated by COVID-19 should be welcomed.

In the past two years, programmatic out of home (OOH) has seen a surge in adoption, as an increasing amount of digital OOH inventory has become programmatically enabled. The ability to book an OOH campaign in the same way one might book a ‘traditional’ online digital campaign, through using a demand side platform (DSP) that enables advertisers to plan, activate and optimise mid-flight, has been driven by the need for increasing flexibility and responsiveness that can be difficult to achieve in a traditional OOH buy. An additional benefit is the convenience that programmatic OOH now affords when it comes to planning and strategising omni-channel campaigns.

As a world-leading supply side platform (SSP) automating the planning and trading of OOH inventory and enabling programmatic trading via partnerships signed with over 30 demand-side platforms (DSPs), VIOOH provides access to premium digital OOH inventory globally, including delivering 2.3bn monthly impressions via JCDecaux inventory in the US.

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Today, programmatic OOH represents an essential tool in the battle to beat the challenge of changing behaviours. By using mobile data intelligently, it is possible to identify the most effective times and frame locations through which to reach audiences as their patterns of behaviour change, and target them with programmatic OOH at the moments that matter using trigger-based activation. In programmatic trading, buyers can know a screen’s geographic coordinates as well as audience composition and previous device exposure, which allows marketers to tailor messages to real-world circumstances and use data-driven approaches. So messaging can flexibly conform to audience composition in specific locales at specific times.

In VIOOH’s recent State of the Nation report, in which 600 advertising and agency executives were interviewed about their perceptions and adoption of programmatic OOH, we found that 65% of US advertisers believe programmatic OOH is important for performance-led campaigns. For a medium that has traditionally been associated purely with brand-building activity, widening its relevance to encompass both brand and performance objectives, combined with the ease of buying OOH alongside other digital media within a campaign, means we are likely to see further adoption of programmatic as we head into 2021.

Our report also showed that over the next 18 months, 51% of US omni-channel campaigns are likely to involve programmatic OOH. This may not sound much but it represents a significant growth opportunity for digital OOH, which did not previously form part of campaign budgets that were planned or bought programmatically. Omni-channel campaigns which include the strategic coordination of new technologies and messaging opportunities across each channel in the mix will undoubtedly provide a stronger holistic outcome for both the consumer and the advertiser.

Programmatic OOH plays a crucial – though not singular or separate – role in this approach. By partnering with other media that offer a similar degree of granular targeting, OOH can play a vital part in ad effectiveness, working hand-in-hand to re-target consumers, driving actions that directly result in sales.

2021 will see marketers looking to counter the challenges of changing behaviours in their quest to make up for a largely difficult year in which businesses in almost every vertical have had to face untold challenges. Programmatic OOH is, I believe, the secret weapon that will help them achieve that.

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