The world today is screen-bound. Most brands and businesses rely heavily on digital marketing (online) to insert themselves into the lives of their customers. However, out-of-home advertising (OOH) is still widely used by these same brands to reach potential customers on the go, increase brand awareness and drive revenue.
Brands are taking advantage of this unique opportunity to engage with their target audiences when they are not staring at their computer or mobile screens. Without the ability to skip ads, OOH proves that it is still a reliable advertising medium for marketers. More than reliability, OOH gives marketers the impact they need for a campaign.
With that in mind, OOH is thriving now more than ever. According to the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA), the first and second quarters of 2022 were very successful for the industry. In the first quarter of the year, advertising revenues increased by 40.5%, and in the second quarter by 28.9% compared to the same periods of the previous year.
OAAA President and CEO, Anna Bager believes OOH will surpass the same period in 2019, which means the industry is on track to match or perhaps exceed pre-pandemic spend.
This great news is a great opportunity for OOH leaders. The increase in spending on OOH can only lead to one thing – more requests for ad space!
With the increase in demand, market-leading OOH media owners with a huge inventory supply are receiving an overwhelming number of inbound requests. This is a good problem for media owners as the demand for your services increases. But this is where it gets complicated. The volume of incoming requests can exceed the capacity of the resources you have on the ground.
It’s difficult for media owners like you to allocate your resources appropriately to handle these incoming requests, resulting in a potential loss of customers and revenue. Alarm bells are ringing in the ears of business owners at OOH.
A temporary solution may be to increase current sales staff. This would mean additional costs for entrepreneurs to train a new team, and this cycle could repeat itself as demand increases.
There is another solution for OOH media owners today. AdTech companies in the outdoor advertising industry continue to find new ways to simplify the sales and campaign execution processes. One of their more recent developments is self-serve advertising platforms for the industry. The term self-serve advertising means that advertisers or media buyers can now plan an advertising campaign and buy sites that meet their needs without interacting with a physical sales representative or a media owner themselves.
In other words, a self-serve advertising platform allows advertisers to choose the specifications they need for their campaigns – campaign duration, site location, audience segmentation, type of inventory, and so on. These platforms may also come with a programmatic function that allows campaigns to run automatically based on the specific details selected.
Media owners can now own your own “e-commerce” platform that sells your inventory at the prices you want. This self-service ad platform can be integrated into an existing website, and media buyers who look you up online or happen to come across your website can now schedule and run their campaigns independently on this platform.
Buyers can schedule campaigns and submit proposals for their self serve ads to you. As a media owner, you have the option to accept or reject this offer. Media buyers can then make payments online using a payment method of your choice – Paypal, Internet banking, etc. This creates transparency for both media owners and media buyers.
With LMX Online, you can now have your own white-labelled self-service ad platform that can help you close deals online. It can also serve as a lead generator. Your self-service platform will be customised according to your needs – adding parameters, location data, inventory packages and more.
You can book a demo today to understand how a self-serve ad platform works and experience it for yourself.