Before you understand programmatic Out of Home, you need to understand programmatic advertising.

Put simply, programmatic advertising is the automated buying and selling of ad inventory using technology and software – a supply-side platform (SSP) selling space from media owners, connected to a demand-side platform (DSP) buying advertising from brands and agencies. ~70% of online media budgets are now traded programmatically.

The platforms aggregate all the data from both sell and buy sides to efficiently buy the most relevant advertising plays for the brand, based on the audience and campaign parameters they’re looking for, in near-real time.

With the rapid growth of digital Out of Home (DOOH), now reaching 70% of UK adults weekly, the channel is quickly moving into an automated world, with data dictating not just what brands buy, but when, where and how.

This makes programmatic Out of Home the automated buying of audience impressions across DOOH formats. Below is an exploration of the differences between programmatic online and programmatic OOH, the reasons they’re complementary channels as part of an omnichannel advertising strategy and a look at how marketers and brands can activate campaigns as part of their campaign.

Audience measurement

When buying programmatically, advertisers are buying audiences.

Out of Home’s audience data in the UK is a Joint Industry Currency, Route Research, which calculates audience impressions based not only on people exposed to Out of Home locations, but also on supplementary eye-tracking work giving a robust understanding of who actually sees the ads.

As programmatic OOH is a one-to-many medium that delivers multiple advertising impressions per play, meaning a single ad play reaches multiple people, audience delivery on an individual Out of Home ad play can vary by screen, location and time. At the time of buying a campaign, an impression multiplier is used to communicate the total number of impressions per play based on the parameters of screens, locations and times.

Enhanced planning insights

It’s commonplace to buy online and mobile ads programmatically based on target audiences. This opportunity is available for DOOH, using advanced audience targeting techniques.

Bauer Media Outdoor uses a suite of insight and smart planning tools, allowing brands to target audience cohorts at each stage in the consumer journey through demographic, socio-economic, behavioural, purchasing and affinity data.

The insight generated can supplement first-party brand data select the best inventory to be made available for each programmatic deal to deliver more effective and targeted campaigns. The possibility to target both diverse and segmented audiences can bring greater ROI to your advertising spend.

Data and trigger-based buying

Unlike traditional and digital Out of Home, programmatic gives advertisers an increased level of control and flexibility when it comes to buying campaigns, akin to the capabilities of digital programmatic.

Using foundational data, that is known and consistent, such as day, time and location or variable data, which is unknown and uncontrollable, such as the weather, sports results or user behaviour, advertisers can activate programmatic DOOH campaigns at the most relevant moment for the campaign.

With insight from a campaign strategy, activating DOOH at the right moment can deliver additional visibility on your campaign at the most effective time. Setting parameters in the programmatic buying platform will activate a campaign only when those conditions are met.

Dynamic creative optimisation

Our industry research, The Moments of Truth, demonstrates the benefits of making creative copy as relevant as possible to the audience.

Explicitly referencing relevant content or moments on the creative, as well as displaying the campaign at the most relevant time, significantly increases a brain response in audiences engaging with Out of Home.

Brands can leverage advanced audience, asset and environmental data to drive maximum contextual relevance by dynamically serving ads based on the data associated with each play, and on an advertisers campaign requirements.

Audience targeting​

Both approaches help advertisers reach the right consumer at the right time, based on audience segments, proximity to key locations, specific neighborhoods, and other key demographic characteristics.​

Dynamic creative​

Variable messaging is a crucial differentiator for Bauer Media Outdoor's programmatic and direct offerings. Updates to messaging can adjust dynamically based on the time of day, the day of the week, the temperature, the traffic speed, and more.​

Measurability

OOH is measurable, just like other media. With Bauer Media Outdoor's suite of data-driven solutions, we can help advertisers plan, amplify, and measure their OOH campaigns

Data-informed insights​

Campaigns can leverage data to change messaging through both approaches dynamically. However, the inventory is locked with a direct buy and the data-informed messaging plays throughout the pre-sold campaign. With a programmatic buy, data informs the dynamic message and determines whether the ad is served.​