Digital Mobile Billboards: Shining Ads Are Not Always Effective

Digital Mobile Billboards

The OOH Industry will change after the pandemic

As the economic impact of COVID-19 continues to unfold, brands and agencies need to keep a up to date with the changing consumer behaviors and ensure they are prepared for any outcomes and find new opportunities. Marketers will have to change their strategies to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 is now a major focus since advertisers are researching better alternatives to keep their clients. Traditional out-of-home advertising methods such as billboards, bus stops, fliers, magazines, and transit posters will have a hard time finding their feet in the long run.

A survey conducted by the platform Numerator indicated many industries are shifting their messaging to in-home delivery. As example, restaurants are pivoting to food delivery message. The increased “work from home” periods will force the shift of advertising concepts. Numerator reported that Burger King and Little Caesars are even advertising new delivery options available in their stores.

Adzze has been adapting the advertising vehicles to a more sensitive message. The team has working on extending its capabilities to offer advertising vehicles that can reach the consumers at their safest place: at home. One of these concepts uses pizza boxes as advertising space. Think of this as small moving billboard that gets delivered at the consumer’s home. Studies demonstrated that this type of ads can evoke an 80% recall rate (8 out of 10 households individuals remember to see an ad on the pizza box) with an average ROI of 150%. This means, for every 1 dollar the advertiser invested in a pizza box advertising campaign, they received at least additional 2.5 dollars of sales. For more details see the article Estimating the ROI of Pizza Box Marketing.

Among all traditional advertising media, out of home (OOH) advertising is growing the fastest. In the second quarter of 2019, the medium posted revenue growth of 7.7%. Interestingly, the growth can be attributed to the increasing digitization of OOH advertising using digital mobile billboards and other innovations.

Are digital mobile billboards the real deal?

According to this analysis, the digitization of OOH is the most significant trend in the sector right now. Notably, digital mobile billboards are hard to miss because of the flashy and graphic images used. For this reason, there is an increased adoption of digital out-of-home advertising (DOOH), which WARC expects to expand at an annual rate of 10.1% between 2018 and 2021. WARC established that DOOH would be responsible for almost all of OOH advertising’s growth going forward.

Nevertheless, are digital billboards a delight to everybody who views it? Not. A significant population sees billboards in general as agents of visual pollution. Notably, a campaign dubbed Scenic America is working towards the complete removal of billboards across the US. One of the fundamental issues that Scenic America has with the billboards is that they destroy the beauty of nature.

Notably, the problem with digital mobile billboards is that shiny ads are distracting. According to this study, digital billboards are responsible for drivers taking their eyes from the wheel hence leading to fatal accidents. Notably, the study established that drivers stare at digital billboards for longer than they would static billboards. As a result, the use of the advertising medium, going forward, could face increased pressure hence making it unfavorable.

The industry will shift to Stay-at-Home Ad options

Billboards will not be an attractive advertising method. Blank billboards and cancelled digital ads across the country and many parts of the globe is a strong pointer to how the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the world today has impacted sign advertising. The devastating effects of the pandemic on human lives could almost be likened to how terribly it has also dealt with businesses around the world. Some out-of-home advertising firms have withdrawn their earnings projections for the year as a result of market uncertainties at the moment. A good number of businesses that will survive the pandemic will most likely have to struggle to find their footing again. Reports also say that digital ad giants, Facebook and Google have also had their shares of the downturn. Even Coca-Cola has soft-pedaled its marketing drives.

Most digital ads creation companies have put a temporary stop on ads creation. A reasonable overview of the current crisis wrought by the COVID-19 spread shows that making new ad videos may just end up as a waste of time and money for the ad shoot companies as well as it is for the owners of the business. In the coming weeks, ad buyers in the USA will tilt towards new advertising ideas the more. All methods of advertising that serve as workable alternatives to OOH advertising will shine as saviors. And they’ll shine the more if they provide equally satisfying results for the clients.

Advertising trucks: the pitfalls

Advertisers have been using alternative to static billboards as vehicle advertising or digital mobile OOH. However, the use of advertising trucks during the ad campaign has risks as impact on reputation. When the truck carries the brand on the road, it plays the role of a brand ambassador. Any potential incident might risk other people on the road. If the truck driver misbehaves, the brand might suffer in terms of reputation. It is because the audience will associate bad behavior with the business. In addition, advertising trucks have several pitfalls as low return on the ad investment, difficult to track the outcomes and low brand recall. Advertising trucks cannot pinpoint the exact audience that a business would like to reach. As such, the ad campaign might generate thousands of impressions per day, but only a handful of them will lead to direct action.

The people’s resistance to digital billboards is not the only challenge facing the advertising medium. Unfortunately, there is no way advertisers can target the exact audience when using digital mobile billboards. Not even the mobile nature of the billboards is enough to increase their efficiency.

According to this analysis, mobile billboards target areas that have a high density of customers. The reason for this is to increase the chances of a particular section of the population to view the message. However, the billboards cannot isolate that specific section of the consumer population to increase brand engagement.

While the impressions generated from this ad campaign will be sky-high, the conversion rates are underwhelming. It is because conversion rates correlate positively with the engagement rates, which are higher when targeting is more precise.

Building a Brand requires a lot of construction work!

In-the-hand advertising is the best medium for advertisers looking to target the exact audience. Particularly, an advertiser can isolate the most desired portion of the audience. For example, say you want to market your cannabis business to legal age customers. Here, you can take advantage of radical ad mediums like use of custom printed coasters to pass the message. Usually, people who drink in bars are of legal age and many of them would not mind using cannabis products. Therefore, you can deliver the custom printed coasters to the bar of your choice. The idea is that the coasters will take advantage of the ambience in the bar to convey the message to potential customers.

Door Hanger Marketing will emerge as Stay-at-Home advertising

The advertising methods are changing in the age of COVID-19. Whether its effects are brief or prolonged, marketers need to be nimble in these challenging times, and pivot when needed while optimizing performance throughout the crisis.

Advertisers will have to find alternative channels to reach consumers and many already pivoted to In-Home Advertising. This model represents the new market trend in advertising as an alternative to traditional OOH advertising channels. New advertising methods as seen at Adzze, will effectively engineer the on-boarding of major businesses as many begin to see the tremendous benefit of in-home advertising.

As example, Adzze worked on expanding its capabilities to offer advertising on door hangers. The message of the advertiser is printed on door hangers and placed on the doorknob of households. Door Hanger Marketing  is an unconventional marketing tactics since the targeted audience do not expect to see the ad hanging on their doorknob.  The surprise effect of seeing flyers door hangers causes a cognitive stimulus on the consumers which enhances the assimilation of the message and makes it memorable. The households can be targeted by specific demographics and the advertiser must partner with the capable Door Hanger Advertising company to ensure to track the door hanger delivery to the targeted addresses. Typically, the return of Door Hanger Advertisement program is 3x, this means for every $1 invested, the advertiser receives $3 back.