subject: Channel Planning For Out Of Home Advertising: The Moving Target [print this page] Imagine the era before integrated marketing communications became widely adopted across the advertising world. In almost every country, the classic consumer channel choice for media planners was a predetermined selection of up to six media: TV, digital, print, radio, out of home advertising and cinema.
In India, arguably because of its focus on broadcast media, the industry historically bracketed outdoor and cinema together under the umbrella title of out of home advertising. Out of home advertising was regarded as a discrete set of channels which, besides cinema, ranged from outdoor road sites to street furniture, as well as tactical opportunities, such as advertising on dry cleaners' clothes hangers.
Today, that has all changed. Three separate forces have converged to radically alter the out of home landscape for advertisers. The advent of smartphones, most notably the iphone, and BlackBerry in India, About two-thirds of all smartphone usage is out-of-home. The emergence of the 'fourth screen'; Beyond the three screens of TV,computer and mobile, the fourth screen includes any other environmental or ambient video screens, such as TVs you can watch at a filling station while you refuel your car. It is a catch-all definition that includes in-car GPS. The rise of integrated marketing or 360 communications planning. This looks at all commercial forms of reaching consumers, rather than just the conventional six media channels. out of home advertising not only embraces mobile and the fourth screen, but also in-store retailing opportunities, such as product demonstrations and point-of-sale collateral.
Of these three forces, the first two truly represent new communications opportunities for consumers. In 2009, Nielsen sponsored an exhaustive one-day ethnographic study led by Ball State University. Billed as the Video Consumer Mapping Study, it indicates that mobile usage accounts for 20 minutes a day among adults aged 18-64 and the fourth screen eight minutes a day. By comparison, the average Indian adult spends 353 minutes watching TV, including DVRs, DVDs and VoD, and 143 minutes in front of a computer, including the internet and all forms of consumer software. These data points imply mobile and the fourth screen account for 5% of all consumer screen time on a typical weekday. Yet this proportion is likely to explode as technology continues to advance in areas such as mobile 4G and location-based social media. In short, out-of home advertising now offers advertisers a burgeoning array of options. These extend well beyond the classic role of outdoor media, which were characteristically seen to help boost a brand's ad awareness and general presence near its point-of-sale.
To help determine the role of the media, including out of home advertising, in the communications plan, UM has developed its Channel allocation Tool, CAT. Based on a global survey of over 100,000 consumer interviews in over 25 countries, CAT can help to show the value of each channel against an array of communications objectives and audiences. In this overview, we'll focus on what CAT can reveal about out of home advertising in India.
By overlaying the channel effectiveness norms for awareness and transactions on to the map, we can create four map quadrants which, clockwise from top-right, are: high awareness/high transaction; high awareness/ low transaction; low awareness/low transaction; and low awareness/high transaction. Consumers confirm what advertisers have long known: classic outdoor media, such as roadside posters, are pre-eminent in building awareness. They score highest of all media on awareness and lead in the high awareness/ low transaction quadrant and expand the marketer's classic in-store repertoire.
Perhaps most revealing are the various roles of in-store media and how they disperse across two quadrants, low awareness/high transaction and high awareness/high transaction. Mobile apps are perceived by consumers to have a valuable role in transactions. They are the only new channel that exceeds the transaction effectiveness norm and expands the marketer's classic in-store repertoire.
Conversely, while mobile search appears to have limited value on this map, if we recalibrate the communications objective to another goal available on CAT, seeking more information', mobile search soars to the top position, with an effectiveness level of 45%. Just behind mobile search on this communications goal ranking, at 44%, are mobile interactive ads. The implication is that, in the consumer's eye, the new mobile media have created more nuanced roles beyond the two traditional overarching ad norms of awareness and spurring sales. Mobile media primarily offer completely different communications opportunities and roles when compared to the more established out of home advertising.
What's striking about this analysis is that mobile is moderately weak in a conventional awareness or transaction support role, with indices often below 100; but mobile appears to excel when tasked with enabling the consumer to provide or receive a recommendation. If you have ever been in unfamiliar territory and turned to your mobile phone browser to recommend, for example, a cinema film or restaurant, you know how indispensable this new found data source can be.
We can also see mobile's growth accelerating among 18-24s. Arguably, this is important since this demographic represents the mid-term future of media consumption patterns as they age and mature within the population. For 18-24s, mobile search, messaging and games have an enhanced, above-average strength for example, in areas such as 'seek more information and recommendation', as well as 'education'.
In looking at the overall role of out-of-home media in the US, we can draw broad parallels with TV. Both media are in the process of revolutionising themselves because of the online and digital opportunities. The paradox of television is that viewing consumption is at an all-time high, but the fragmenting audience shift to cable alongside the dogged growth of the DVR is of real concern to advertisers. In the face of this audience fragmentation, we may be wondering 'where TV viewers have gone'. They are still there, but the astute advertiser is actively seeking more seductive and tailored ways to talk to and identify with them for example, through integrated cross-platform promotions.
The same principle applies to out of home advertising. Outdoor's quintessential role is unaltered, but digital outdoor advertising provides new and timely ways of reaching audiences and pinpointing communities. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that mobile is not stealing the traditional outdoor audience. Instead, it is expanding the communications repertoire available to marketers. Which is just as well because, as consumers become more media-literate, they will increasingly expect messages that acknowledge, meet and exceed their specific needs at any one time or place.
