Out-of-Home Ads in the Digital Age with Charlie Riley [Video]

What if I told you that every time you drive by a billboard, you are an active participant in someone’s out-of-home advertising campaign?

These days, it’s all about digital marketing. And so something like out-of-home (OOH) advertising might not always be top of mind for marketers. But what if OOH is actually the secret weapon that can help you reach those high-value accounts in a way that digital marketing alone can’t?

I sat down with Charlie Riley, head of marketing at OneScreen.ai, a company accelerating the growth of real-world advertising by making it easier to buy and sell out-of-home ads. Charlie and I chatted about common OOH myths, why this strategy is more data-driven than ever, and how brands of all sizes can leverage this growing channel to break through digital fatigue.

To watch the full interview, check out the video below:

This interview is part of G2’s Industry Insights series. For more content like this, subscribe to G2 Tea, a weekly newsletter with SaaS-y news and entertainment.

Inside the industry with Charlie Riley

Tell us a little bit about your role as head of marketing at OneScreen.ai.

I joined as the first head of marketing, and it's exciting. What brought me here is that we sell marketing services to marketers. So I've sat in the seat before of who we're trying to talk to. I've gone through the pains of trying to make sure you're working with sales to find as many right prospects as possible. 

So, we offer a great solution that mixes science and art with the planning and measurement we do around out-of-home advertising. It's also combined with great storytelling because to make a a visual canvas across billboards, transit ads, mobile trucks, you name it. It gives a really great canvas for marketers to tell a story. 

You’ve mentioned in the past that there are some common misperceptions about OOH advertising. What do you think are the biggest myths or misunderstandings about the channel, and how do you address them in your marketing efforts?

I've been talking to a lot of marketers since I joined, and a couple of trends have stood out. I think the biggest myth is that OOH can't be measured. When someone thinks of OOH, they think of the billboards you see on the side of a freeway, and those can actually be measured. We measure those for customers all the time by utilizing mobile IDs. 

We're able to see, anonymously, who's had access to an ad, and then we narrow down even more using demographics. Then, an advertiser can do retargeting with them. You can also measure such OOH ads with a control group that has been exposed to ads versus those who haven't. 

In the same way that marketers are used to seeing measurement and attribution from digital channels, we can do a lot of the same things with OOH, and we actually combine those very well with digital campaigns.

Another misperception is that OOH has to be a big campaign and that it's going to cost a lot. There are a lot of variables to that. We've seen campaigns that are very similar to the average paid search campaign. It really depends as there are options for a wide range of budgets. 

Another issue that we've seen is that those who have never done OOH before may not be aware of all the different channels or executions that could be done. 

Again, someone might think of a billboard as the only option. But we can wrap cars that are part of an account-based marketing (ABM) program. We can do wrapped coffee trucks that we've used street team activation to give a captive audience with prospects you're trying to talk to. There's digital OOH signage in restaurants, bars, and transit. There's a whole range of options that someone could take advantage of.

So that's really what we do. We figure out a customer’s overall goals from a marketing standpoint, plan around those, and then we can measure back to that.

You brought up ABM strategies and how you guys move your strategies to help companies. Many marketers may not think of OOH advertising as part of their ABM strategy. Why do you believe it’s a valuable channel for ABM, and how does it help target high-value accounts?

What we've seen is that people have digital ad fatigue right now. We are inundated with emails. We are bombarded with digital ads. We’re on the phone all the time. A nice added mix to an overall ABM category or strategy is the real-life in-person marketing, and that's through OOH advertising. 

If someone has a target account list of their top 50 prospects that they really want to get in front of, we can map that out. We can see where their office locations are, where traffic patterns may be for their executives, and where that demographic spends time in the real world. We can make a plan to provide exposure to those places. That could include large billboards, transit ads, bulletin ads, or a mobile truck. We can measure all of those as well. 

We don't expect OOH to take away from a digital spend. We expect it to complement that. 

I'd love to dive even more into OOH trackability and measurability. 

Like you mentioned, a lot of people look at OOH advertising and see that a potential challenge is measuring the impact. Can you talk about how technological advancements have made OOH ads more measurable and trackable?

We've seen a lot of great ways that someone can measure, and it really depends on their ROI or overall marketing goals. 

For example, with billboards, we can geofence a location where we can identify who might have seen those ads and then deliver a list where they could retarget those that were exposed within their core audience, not just the overall population that might have been driven by an ad, but those that we can identify within their demographics. 

A lot of B2B companies will use OOH as an execution to extend their brand at conferences. For B2C companies, their conversion is usually direct sales or foot traffic to a location. We can show all of that information all the way through and get really granular. It really depends on what their goals are.

There are a couple of ways that we can do it, but it is measurable. When you talk about it with marketers, they want to learn more because they just don't understand how there's that correlation in the same way that they are tracking paid search campaigns.

As digital media continues to thrive, I think I could speak for a lot of marketers when I say that OOH advertising seems to be one of the only traditional ad mediums that is still actively growing. 

What do you think is driving this growth, and how does a company like OneScreen.ai help brands capitalize on this momentum?

We're seeing a lot of marketers come to us for the first time who have never used OOH and are suffering from digital ad fatigue. They're just inundated with too much on their mobile phone, too many emails, and AI-written content that you can just see through. Not to say all that's bad, but brands are looking for alternatives to add to the media mix. 

They're not going to move their entire media budget to OOH, but it's a compliment to their digital channels. We've seen campaigns that, in conjunction with a paid search campaign, have had a 15% lift in attribution towards success. So, it complements digital channels very nicely. 

You're in a different mode of thinking when you're driving, when you're in transit, and when you're at a conference. So it's one of those things where you're seeing the brand in a different execution, in a different way in the real world, which compliments anything that's been done digitally.

We're seeing a lot of brands, both B2B and B2C, utilize OOH. Sometimes, they want a billboard in a specific city, and we can tell them they actually have a higher concentration of prospects in a different city, and we can help them run a campaign for even longer there. It's been really great to see marketers who have maybe never dabbled in OOH before seeing it as a viable channel to tell their story. 

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For the people who have never dabbled in that area, and are pretty skeptical of its value, what unique advantages does OOH advertising offer that digital can’t, and how do you communicate these to potential clients?

If a challenger brand is using OOH marketing and nobody else in their category is, it's a competitive advantage because they're going to look bigger than some of their competitors. They have a different medium to play with. So that's one way that we've seen success with companies that are skeptical. 

As I said, it's the real world. People are bombarded with phone ads, and they zone out. But, you can't turn OOH ads off. You're going to see them, even if it's subconscious.

We're also seeing brands utilize it to tell a story when they’re doing a brand refresh or product launch. We've seen success with customers that have used it for customer appreciation campaigns. They show their customers in ads in New York City, and get great social proof out of that. Their people are taking photos of that. They're sharing that on social and bringing it back to digital. We've got plenty of use cases that have shown results for campaigns. The proof in the pudding.

It's one of those things where it can be overwhelming to start on your own. It's good to work with experts. So, we're finding success with companies that see us and our expertise.

One misconception you mentioned earlier is that many may think of OOH advertising as primarily for large brands with big budgets. How are OOH ads made more accessible for small and medium-sized businesses?

There are options for every type of company. Yes, there's certain companies that could probably afford to do a massive campaign across the top 10 major markets. But the nice thing about OOH, is that there’s a wide range of inventory. Some people might not think of some field marketing executions, like wrapping a coffee truck or having a street team at an event. 

OOH is not going to fit every budget, but there are a lot of executions that someone could, think about. If you do a lot of conferences, there are executions to tell a bigger story, look bigger, and do some ambush marketing even if you're not a main sponsor. If your total addressable market (TAM) is pretty narrow, there are options. As companies grow, it can become even more of a channel that they should consider for their marketing mix.

What trends do you see shaping the future of OOH advertising, and how are you positioning yourself to stay ahead of these trends?

The biggest trend we're seeing is measurement. Marketers are used to having to show measurement, data, and statistics around every other channel. OOH really shouldn't be different from that, and we're positioned in a great way for that because we do provide measurement. We're able to provide some insight into who might have seen the ads, retargeting opportunities for them, and the overall efficiency of the campaigns. 

Some of the product opportunities will be integrating with CRMs and systems where people want to see their data. We're moving in that direction, and it will be synonymous with how they see data from other types of campaigns. 

I think the next thing is going to be how OOH fits in with digital channels. For example, AI is in every category and every industry. We're seeing success with it being able to help in this space. 

We use a tool that helps guide the creative process. It helps us determine whether the ad is going to make an impact or if we need to make changes. Is the customer using too many words on their billboard? Should their logo be on the right-hand side rather than the left? How would people interpret that? There is evolving technology that's being used in an old-school industry. 

When you think about the future of an OOH, you have a wide range of options. This is what we focus on. We're trying to help marketers measure as best as possible. We're trying to help them build plans and handhold them so that they don't have to be an OOH expert. Measurement is the big piece, we've been in front of for a while, and we're going to continue to get better.

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Follow Charlie Riley on Linkedin to learn more about OOH advertising and how to use it to diversify your marketing efforts.

Edited by Supanna Das