Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
A UK Out of Home industry collaboration pooling the results from 65 campaigns between March and September 2020, reveals that advertisers who continued to invest in Out of Home benefitted from strong performance including an average +51% shift in ad recall and increase of +16% for purchase intent. The results are so strong that even comparing these figures to those we observed pre-lockdown shows that effectiveness of Out of Home campaigns has not diminished over the period, reflecting the return of significant audiences to high streets, shopping centres and roadside across the summer.
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Research studies undertaken by JCDecaux, Talon, Kinetic, Posterscope, Rapport and Global and endorsed by Out of Home industry body Outsmart featured campaigns using a raft of OOH media owner sites. The robust study demonstrates not only that Out of Home ads across brands in categories including automotive, FMCG and retail were seen and recalled, but also translated to physical actions, cutting through to consumers in terms of positive actions at the bottom of the marketing funnel.
Sophie Pemberton, Group Strategy Director at Talon, who co-ordinated the collaboration, comments: “This collaboration has been vital in proving that advertisers investing in Out of Home over the past few months have continued to see great results from their campaigns. We believe these results will generate more appetite to use the channel, help instil confidence that audiences are still out and about and prove that we have the expertise to target them effectively. Bringing together businesses from across the OOH industry to demonstrate our wide variety of clients and measurement studies has been a great success and I hope we can do more together in the future to continue to grow the medium.”
The overall campaign outcomes showed shifts in test and control scenarios for brands:
- +51% increase in top of mind awareness
- +51% increase in Ad recall
- +3% increase in consideration
- +16% increase in purchase intent
Studies which analysed effects on footfall showed an increase of over twice the audience visiting a store in a test and control environment.
For particular categories, like automotive, the effect of brands not going dark as the UK came out of the initial lockdown period has proved noticeably beneficial. Overall top of mind awareness for brands increased substantially by an effect one and a half times stronger than for other categories. Automotive advertisers also saw a +5% increase in consideration and a +35% increase in purchase intent.
As high street and roadside Out of Home audiences have returned to normal, some of the key measures affected positively by campaign reach and activation have performed better than expected and above previous levels. This could be due to a less cluttered advertising environment driving greater stand out, but also shows strong audience reach numbers as the industry has flexibly adjusted many campaigns to reach known high audience locations.
Tim Lumb, Director at Outsmart, said “With the recent announcement of further restrictions in England, this collaborative study demonstrates that brands taking an insight-led approach to OOH can reap the rewards across brand and action metrics. Data often challenges our gut-feel perceptions, and we are seeing audience adaption from recent events rather than a significant reduction.”
Methodology overview
Brand impact results were collated from over 65 Out of Home campaigns that ran during the 2020 pandemic, between March and September. Results were collated from campaign effectiveness studies from across the industry, from OOH specialists and media owners, which were merged to look at the overall effect of OOH on measurable outcomes. Data on key brand metrics such as awareness, advertising recall and consideration, as well as store footfall, was analysed among two sample group: those exposed to the OOH campaign vs those who were not exposed to the campaign. This allowed us to see the incremental uplift in key brand metrics as a result of being exposed to OOH advertising.
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