It has often been said that what you can’t measure, you can’t manage. When it comes to the rapidly growing OOH market, this is particularly true, writes Geoff Lyons.
What gets measured gets done, what gets measured and fed back gets done well, and what gets rewarded gets repeated. Never a truer word spoken, and vital for this wonderful industry we’re in. What can often confuse the matter though, is a lack of clarity on what needs to be done in the first place. At a recent conference I listened to a very smart no nonsense marketing leader. There was absolute clarity in their strategic viewpoint. Reach builds their brands. So, they widen the top of funnel as far as they possibly can. They want to make the middle of the funnel as interesting as possible to involve and engage their customers and they strive for quality at the bottom to close out the sale. They have zero interest in meaningless CPMs and creatively, they don’t just plug and play, they make their advertising work well by testing it in every channel that their brands live in. Their conclusion, if it works, we’ll do it again, but even better.
OOH advertising is one of the key drivers of brand success as it is a trump card to play in the pursuit of reach and frequency. What is crucial though, is that like all forms of media, its true value is only revealed through effective measurement. Measurement can optimise campaign planning, ensure accountability and transparency, demonstrate campaign effectiveness and, crucially, capture the all-important currency of attention.
At PML Group, our focus is not only on helping brands win this attention, but also on quantifying it, ensuring that every element of a campaign is analysed to drive real results. As brands grapple for attention in a competitive media landscape, OOH’s position as a broadcast ‘one to many’ medium in the real world offers a valuable opportunity for brands to connect with audiences at scale in the year ahead. The rapid pace of OOH’s transformative change, driven by data-driven insights, new audience measurement, Digital OOH investment, creative technology and numerous sustainability initiatives, is giving advertisers even more compelling reasons to embrace the medium. These change drivers are incorporated into our thinking and processes. Through our Plan/Action/Review strategic framework, we provide a 360-degree view of campaign performance, using a suite of tools that deliver comprehensive measurement at every stage and bring new levels of sophistication to delivering mass marketing solutions.
‘Before anything else, preparation is the key to success’ – Plan
Data-led planning, fuelled by audience and market insights inform the OOH tactics we deploy for our clients. The measures used to decide on which levers to pull is contingent on the job to be done, the brief. 2025 will be an exciting time for OOH as these insights will be elevated with the Outdoor Media Association (OMA) launching an enhanced version of JNOR, incorporating Digital OOH, alongside updated travel surveys and panel data. JNOR will cement itself as an essential planning and review tool, operating alongside bespoke PML Group services to optimise location and audience strategy.
Audience mobility continues its upward trajectory with 2024 a record-breaking year again for public transport journeys. Car journeys are also not abating, and Dublin was ranked as the second busiest city in the world with journeys up 8% v 2023. In 2025, next generation census data, including dynamic demographics will allow us to focus not only on where consumers live, but where they are. Planning is about understanding where people Live, Work and Play and what they Think, Feel and Do in those environments. This is key in delivering sophisticated reach.
OOH is of course the ultimate location medium. It physically roots brands in communities and its familiar physical presence, increased flexibility and trusted public canvas is a compelling mix for brands to cut through to consumers. In 2025 we expect to see brands take a greater role in shaping location-specific messaging around their own customer data sets and their most relevant points of interest. This type of aggregated and anonymised clean customer data is complemented by consumer behaviour data garnered via ongoing panel research conducted by PML Group and Ipsos B&A. For example, in recent weeks, we published noteworthy insights on switching intentions among consumers in several product categories including energy, telecoms and finance. Access to spatial analytics and audience data enables brands to better align with their target audiences. Our market-leading MAPS platform identifies and visualises audiences and POIs, helping us create Outdoor strategies that are measured to be both efficient and effective.
‘The future depends on what you do today’ – Action
Measurement plays a key role in how brands show up on OOH. I alluded above to understanding audience behaviours and thoughts by location or time of day. Such knowledge, provided by our OCS research, means brands can use the flexibility afforded by both classic and digital OOH to maximise the relevance of various creative messages right across a campaign.
Action is about understanding the audience and reacting appropriately at the right time and in the right place.
Anyone heard about Retail Media? Notwithstanding a multiplicity of compelling data sets available, consumer behaviour has changed dramatically and will continue to change. There are limitless touchpoints on all of our paths to purchase and those paths and points of purchase are inconsistent. Where we buy today will not necessarily be where we buy tomorrow. Hence, marketers must think about wide reach at the top of the funnel and sophistication as the funnel narrows to the moment of truth – the sale. Retail marketing covers a myriad of online and offline channels to connect with customers, providing a rich view of purchase behaviour. In an OOH sense, from the outside in, the Retail ecosystem is large and complex. In 2025 more brands will react to the undeniable value of building mental availability and activating in a ‘home to store’ strategic approach, deploying contextually relevant messaging along the path to purchase, driving action instore and online. There is a real opportunity for brands in 2025 to align online and physical Retail Media messaging, amplifying and reenforcing their communications.
Research points us to OOH’s strength in both brand building and driving purchase intent. Deployment of precision digital via our Liveposter platform allows brands to optimise display programmatically, delivering relevant messaging along the path purchase with event based and audience relevant impacts and plays. Our research with Ipsos B&A has highlighted consumer interest and responsiveness to contextually relevant Dynamic OOH content. The flexibility of digital OOH and Liveposter Ad Tech makes delivery of complex content straightforward and indeed, it has become widespread since we pioneered Dynamic digital OOH some ten years ago. But let’s not forget that Classic can also be dynamic. It’s scale, impact, trust and ubiquity builds brands. These strengths have come to the fore again as the market in Ireland recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Classic creative can move minds and entertain and can be done in contextually relevant ways. The creative canvas of our cities and towns is infinite.
Creative use of OOH has been a standout feature of 2024 on panels nationwide and innovation in general has enjoyed a vintage year on the medium. So many brands have effectively added a layer of sophistication to their mass marketing OOH campaigns, through dynamic content, experiential activations or show-stopping OOH special builds. We expect this trend to continue upwards in 2025 and expect more data and technology to play a part going forward.
The best way to maximise creative effectiveness is through measurement – as David Ogilvy said, ‘Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving’. At PML Group, we encourage clients to pre-test campaign creative and we provide the tools do it. Significant gains in effectiveness can be made through incremental changes, highlighted through a process of testing and recommending.
No matter how brands ‘show up’ on OOH, it is incumbent on the industry that they do so in a sustainable and responsible way. The sector has made transformative moves involving paper, inks, lighting, energy consumption and transport. These are making meaningful differences as we move towards a net zero future. Indeed, research by KPMG in the UK shows that per impact, OOH media emits less carbon than all other media and OOH accounts for just 3.3% of ad power consumption and less than 3.5% of the ad industry’s carbon footprint. The same report states that Ooh is four times more energy efficient than digital media.
At the beginning of 2024 PML Group announced its exclusive provision of recycled and recyclable materials for large format and 6 Sheet posters in this market. The product is made from well managed FSC certified forests, recycled materials, and controlled sources. All posters are also printed with water-based Green Guard Gold certified inks. We have worked closely with media owners to deliver meaningful change. In 2025, we will continue to lead, with measurement at the core of some very exciting developments in our sustainability strategic journey.
‘I am still learning’ – Review
The true value of OOH is revealed through measurement. For more than forty years, our business has truly lived that statement. Our IMPACT effectiveness research measures the performance of more than 1,000 OOH campaigns each year, across key marketing metrics. This data has shown that all our planning insights, dynamic deployment and creative refinement are leading to increased campaign performance. Comparing 2,000+ campaigns across 2023 and 2024 shows an overall increase in effectiveness of 8%, including KPIs such as recall, design rating, understanding, relevance and response (CTA). This ongoing research, among almost 8,000 respondents per year, provides insights and learning that close the circle and feed future campaign planning.
OOH is in rude health in Ireland. Our market intelligence indicates that the 2024 market has increased in value by approximately 15% compared to 2023 and we are now back at investment levels last seen in 2019. A wide variety of categories, advertisers and brands are driving this growth, prominent among them, Retail, Drinks and Media, including online brands such as streamers and social media companies, as well national TV, radio and news brands.
OOH media covers a vast ecosystem of networks that serve multiple audiences across multiple daily touchpoints. OOH solutions for clients range from Precision DOOH media choices to Sophisticated Mass Marketing tactics, and everything in between. Our job does not end at optimising on panels but extends through to campaign verification – a final vital act of measurement in the life of an OOH campaign. Verification means accountability and transparency, an added layer of brand safety to an already trusted medium. In 2025 all PML Group clients will have access post-campaign Classic & Digital OOH verification, through Liveposter Verify, enhancing and complementing our physical monitoring of all OOH sites in the country.
Be More Now is our mantra at PML Group and we believe that what gets measured gets done. This principle highlights the critical role of measurement in driving focus, accountability and progress. OOH media has benefited from being among the most measured and accountable of media choices. In an era of sensory and information overload, Outdoor is consistently regarded as a trusted marketing space, helping brands build credibility, loyalty and long-term relationships with its consumers.
Three quotes have been used above, simple words with clarity and purpose from brilliant minds, Alexander Graham Bell, Mahatma Gandhi and Michelangelo. If you can match the name to the quote, drop me line. I wonder what they’d say in the data fuelled AI enhanced world we live in today. I think they might say, ‘Preparation is Key, the future depends on what we do today and never stop learning’.
We’re here to help, Out of Home in 2025 will Be More Now.
