Billboard and OOH Advertising: Can Beacon Technology breathe new life into it?

Sneh Ratna
Last Updated: March 14, 2019

Billboard and OOH advertising have thrived where TV and newspaper ads have failed.

98% of the population sees at least one billboard advertisement every week. 71% of consumers often look at the message on the billboards. Outdoor advertising is still growing (2.9% in 2018) but compare that to Facebook wherein Facebook ads alone reported a whopping 47% in growth.

If outdoor and billboard advertising is to survive the onslaught of digital marketing, it needs to adapt to changing times.

An emerging trend in outdoor and billboard advertising is to make the shift from static to more dynamic outdoor advertising. Case in point, the first ever drinkable Coca-Cola advertisement that was launched in the U.S. during the college basketball’s biggest event: the Final Four.

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Users could Shazam the spot at home or at the games in Indianapolis to have a Coke Zero virtually poured into their mobile phones. Shazam went so far to pour Coke Zero to radio listeners just via sound.

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This advertisement could then be redeemed at a consumer’s nearest store for a free coke. Needless to say, this experiential advertising was a huge success.

Outdoor advertising, particularly billboard advertising is also seeing a great rise in contextual and targeted marketing. This serves a two-fold purpose – it makes ads more dynamic and relevant to the consumers who see it. Advertisers have actually turned from selling ads to selling audiences and they have been successful in their endeavors because of BLE beacon technology.

Beacon Technology and OOH Advertising: A recipe for success

Beacon Advertising: Adshel rolled out more than 3000 beacons to ‘Listen and Learn’

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Adshel, an outdoor beacon advertising company, rolled out more than 3000 beacons to provide advertisers stronger customer targeting capabilities. The beacons were initially used to gather insights on consumers. In the long run, advertisers were able to send hyper-local contextual advertisements to consumers using the Adshel panel.

Beacons advertising can offer crucial analytics to businesses

Out-of-home advertising(OOH) while effective cannot measure how many consumers were compelled to visit their website or store upon seeing the advertisement. Beacons can offer that bit of crucial information to brands and other businesses. These insights are vital because it allows retailers to switch up their beacon advertising campaigns and fine-tune it. Beaconstac’s intuitive dashboard allows you to export analytics and get hourly insights into how your campaigns are performing.

Rotating digital OOH advertising campaigns can be powered by beacon technology

After seeing the same billboard advertising for more than 3 weeks, consumers report a degree of fatigue. This can be taken care of using beacon technology. Gathering insights from advertising beacons, advertisers can switch-up their digital OOH advertising tactics. Even the notifications that get sent out via beacon technology can be fine-tuned. Beaconstac’s intuitive dashboard allows you to schedule campaigns and keep rotating between campaigns depending on their individual performance.

Related: Here’s how you can integrate a digital billboard with a beacon

Targeted billboard and OOH advertising is now a reality

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Beacons can be used to offer targeted information to consumers. To give you an idea, if a consumer is about to walk into McDonald’s for their meal, the OOH advertising billboard outside can give them tailored discounts. Diageo, a British alcoholic beverages company, partnered with pubs in London to promote its Pimm’s brand. The idea was that once the temperature outside reached 16 degrees, beacons would then direct people to have a drink at their nearby pub. The campaign was also designed to have tailored copy depending on the weather.

Beacon advertising can be used for re-targeting

Only about 24% of consumers who see an OOH advertising campaign actually visit the website or store. That is a steep drop from the 71% of consumers who look at the billboard. This is primarily an issue because billboard and OOH advertising is usually static. With a BLE beacon attached to the billboard or other forms of out-of-home advertising, users get prompted with a notification and the action is impulsive. And once a user clicks on these offline digital ads, they can be re-targeted online. Jaguar used historic location data and licensing authority data to map individuals who already owned a Jaguar and those who visited a Jaguar dealership in the recent past. These individuals were then re-targeted online and prompted to book a test drive online. Beaconstac’s dashboard allows you to add a Facebook Pixel ID or Google AdWords Conversion ID for easier and efficient re-targeting.

Beacons can make Shoppable OOH Advertising a breeze

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H&M had David Beckham appear in a Super Bowl commercial wherein viewers at home who had a Smart Samsung TV could buy products from his new clothing line. BLE beacons and proximity marketing can take this one step further. An interactive OOH beacon advertising campaign can allow shoppers to add products that are advertised to their shopping cart with a simple tap. This works out great if you factor in the 52% of millennials that are more likely to buy products on impulse compared to the older generations.

Digital, interactive and out-of-the-box OOH advertising is the future

Using the vital insights collected from BLE beacons, advertisers and businesses alike can tailor campaigns to suit their audiences. In fact, humor could also play a major role in this. No less than 56% of consumers talk about a funny OOH advertising campaign that they’ve encountered. Experiential beacon advertising like shoppable content and Coca-Cola’s drinkable advertisement is also on the rise. This only goes to prove that consumers want to see advertisements that are engaging and relevant to them. Beacon technology plays a huge role in achieving those goals when used in conjunction with interactive billboards.

Since beacons require a compatible app, you might want to look at app-less solutions like NFC and QR codes. By tapping or scanning NFC tags and QR codes, consumers can learn more about your product, navigate to your nearest store or buy your product on the spot.

Explore QR code and NFC use cases here

If you’d like to roll out advertisements that are powered by beacons too, try Beaconstac. An end-to-end solution that allows you to monitor, analyze and gain insights into your campaigns as well as re-target customers.