Mobile data boosts outdoor ads

Warc, 9 June 2014

LONDON: Out-of-home advertising is 200% more effective when mobile data is used to plan campaigns, initial results from a two-week trial has concluded.

In a test conducted between January and May this year, communications agency Posterscope teamed up with telecoms network EE to track consumers' mobile digital behaviour and how responsive they were to out-of-home media sites.

Covering online searches across 120,000 usage hotspots and 19,000 poster locations, the research involved the participation of brands such as Lenovo, Nationwide, RBS and British Gas, among others, MediaWeek reported.

In the trial for Lenovo, the Chinese technology firm, the research found unprompted ad awareness and purchase consideration increased 200% while online searches rose 150% when EE's mData anonymised and aggregated network usage data was used to optimise out-of-home media selections.

When combined with Posterscope's "planner" app, an algorithm-based tool, the researchers were able to find out when and where mobile devices were used in relation to – and in the proximity of – poster sites across the country.

"We can now accurately identify which outdoor sites are seen by users of particular websites or apps and what they are doing on their mobile devices at the time," said James Davies, chief strategy officer at Posterscope 

"By using more sophisticated data analysis techniques we'll be able to identify audiences in real-time, display relevant ads and improve campaign effectiveness even further," he said in comments reported by DecisionMarketing.

For example, the study revealed that the London suburb of Surbiton and Caledonian Road in north London both delivered peaks in visits to fashion-related websites.

This, he said, suggested that the placement of relevant ads in those areas would increase an ad's effectiveness.

Data sourced from MediaWeek, DecisionMarketing; additional content by Warc staff