It has always been human nature to focus on the latest developments in one area, but nowhere has the effectiveness of proximity to home been achieved out of nowhere. The changes of recent years have been additive and not substituting, and it will always be the man of nature who will focus on this recent development in this area.

What makes proximity so effective and can it be especially useful in the context of social media and other media? Out of Home intercepts the consumer before he reaches it, but what makes it possible and what does it do?

A 2015 study by the OAAA shows that 57% of consumers visit a home outside – outside – their home within one hour of a QSR visit. A 2019 Nielsen study shows the impact of proximity to the touchpoint: advertising offers more than twice as many touchpoints per hour as any other medium.

In short, reciprocity is based on reaching consumers when they are ready to buy, which carries more weight than the frequency of your message, and Stephen Freitas of OAAA explains it in detail here. Your job in advertising is to influence purchases, but your job as a media is more important than putting a message in a window: it’s about what comes next.

Your effectiveness in the real world is not based solely on your opinion, but on the data that confirm what you have always recognized as true in your gut.

A recent study by the OOH giant Posterscope clearly shows that proximity to planned foreign homes is driving sales. Research shows something we have always instinctively known: that advertising is as important to the success of an out-of-home marketing strategy as it is to in-house marketing, “says Dr. David D. Miller, director of research and marketing at the University of California, Berkeley.

A billboard for a restaurant

Staying with your core local audience:

We rarely talked about it  during the economic downturn, but OOH remains one of the most far-reaching means of staying in the public consciousness.

A key strategy to weather the storm is to make sure you keep customers who are loyal to your brand and can be trusted. If a small, regional, local brand is unable to survive such difficult times, it is because it has not had the support of its local community, customers or employees.

Using proximity in your home planning provides an ideal platform to reach your local audience and share important updates. With proximity – based on OOH – you can transmit real-time, timely and critical messages. For local and regional advertisers, this means the opportunity to stay in touch with them all the time and the opportunity to be open to their service. We are still there, but we now offer contactless delivery and roadside pickup.

The Work from Home Shift:

One of the huge changes brought about by the pandemic was the record number of people working from home. In the mid-1990s, the number of people working regularly outside the home was in the low single digits, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

A Gallup poll puts the number of foreign home workers in the US at about 48 percent, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. A recent survey by McKinsey & Co. shows that 34% of workers work from home, and a Gallup poll puts the rate of full-time workers “work-to-income ratios at 60%.

Consumers who work from home are leaving their homes and changing their shopping habits, and this creates an opportunity for retailers to attract new customers to their area and generate new business. The traditionally used retail locations may not be the most convenient, so you should move to a new location that better reflects the situation at WFH. This changes the location component of the traffic, so that traffic is almost back to normal.

Hyperlocal is easier than ever:

In the past, running your own home media pages, such as a blog, blog post or social media account, was an inconvenient and time-consuming task that simply wasn’t worth it.

This is no longer the case in the current Out-Of-Home world, but DOOH has also been fueled by changes in the industry that have made it easier to plan and run hyperlocal campaigns, namely by developing programs for them. The streamlining of buying platforms, integrated planning and data API’s and the increasing digitalization of the home have made the use of home media easier and more efficient than ever before. On a simple level, it is much easier to plan simple campaigns in your own home today than it was a few years ago.

Programmatically, this allows media planners and buyers to run numerous small campaigns with detailed targeting options and alternative design options that can be optimized for local audiences, and even a dynamic design option that can help manage local traffic by accessing service points and databases.

We have also talked a lot about geofencing in the Out-Of-Home media, and the evidence for this strategy is well documented. People are more likely to click on mobile ads if they’ve already seen your brand on Out-Of-Home and are familiar with the brand they already see. Geofence can help build a valuable digital audience that matches an advertiser’s audience profile and has already been exposed to your brands on your OOP media.

Out-Of-Home, also helps to support other online activations, and a 2019 Nielsen study showed that more than half of all Out-Of-Home users in the US use their mobile devices to look up brands, receive coupons, download apps, or shop online.

Add new Data for better targeting:

Just because we should ignore new developments in Out-Of-Home targeting does not mean that we should not take a moment to remember the importance and effectiveness of proximity targeting. The two scenarios are not mutually exclusive, but the situation is not as simple as a one-on-two game.

In the face of an Out-Of-Home plan, there is a large amount of media that could meet these needs if proximity were just a prerequisite. By adding a layer of behavioral goals, we can achieve more sophisticated media sets and deliver more effective programs. In addition, the use of new data layers and targeting can be optimized by proximity targeting to further refine and improve the program.

Staying close to (Out of) Home:

As businesses struggle to get through the economic fallout of the global pandemic, it’s imperative that they maintain their core customer base, and for many local and regional companies that means a local audience.  Communicating with them on a regular basis, with the right messaging, when they are in buying mode, and in the last window of opportunity before they make a decision is a critical piece of that plan.