Overview of Out-Of-Home Advertising
When people think OOH the first thing that comes to mind are highway and freeway billboards. Billboards are certainly a large portion of total OOH expenditures but they aren’t the only component. You also have stationary media on benches, fences and walls as well as on many mass transit options including taxis, buses, subways and trains. Furthermore, recent innovations in digital media have provided cost-effective options for sound and motion on most of these advertising options. This enables OOH Advertising with an ability to entertain in ways that it historically could not do.
Upside of Out-Of-Home Advertisement Campaigns
Whether using the old methods or some of the new technology there are a number of very good reasons why Out-Of-Home advertising can be advantageous.
- The consumer doesn’t get an opportunity to exclude OOH. It’s there whether they wanted it or not.
- For local travelers, you’re almost certain to get the desired frequency since OOH pieces are generally in place for at least a month.
- You can target geographically through effective placement of your advertising pieces.
- OOH can provide a nice complement to other media components as part of an integrated campaign.
Downside of Out-Of-Home Advertisement Campaigns
OOH advertising has its shortcomings, though, and most of them are fairly easy to identify as potential issues.
- For the most part, you have a very limited time to communicate with OOH. Your message generally needs to be brief and simple.
- The best locations are in demand and expensive. This often works to exclude smaller and less affluent companies from the prime locations.
- You may be required to buy as much as 90 days at a time so OOH advertising is not really feasible for very short (1 or 2 week) campaigns.
Main Thing To Know About Out-Of-Home Advertising
For my money, OOH Advertising is a poor option as a stand-alone medium. It can be effective in driving a simple message toward other media options but it lacks the dimension to pull off a campaign by itself. If you use OOH as a component of a large multi-faceted campaign it can have a significant impact. Unfortunately, you need to have a pretty big brand and a big budget to make this work well. If you’re not one of the big guys, OOH is probably not a good or realistic option for you.
4 Comments
Enjoyed reading/following your page.Please keep it coming. Cheers!
February 5th, 2011 at 6:25 pm
Thanks for the kind words. We’ll keep posting as long as people keep reading or we run out of topics. I hope neither happens anytime soon. 🙂
February 6th, 2011 at 7:44 am
You make a lot of good points on this blog. Keep up the great work.
June 4th, 2011 at 11:37 am
Thanks! We appreciate the kind words.
June 21st, 2011 at 1:27 pm