Metrics That Matter: How DOOH Can Drive True Business Outcomes

Marketers love a shiny statistic. Nothing is more satisfying than validation that the strategy in fact delivered results. Afterall, it is more important now more than ever to track business outcomes and secure marketing dollars for the future. 

Throughout this article we’ll be referring to a set of terms standard to the DOOH industry, but of course there are some nuances in certain markets that may vary.

First, we need to mention campaign and measurement goals. This point might come across as redundant to acclaimed marketers, but many campaigns are launched without consideration for the overall objective. Is it to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to a website, or increase foot traffic to a physical location (to name just a few)? Being defined and specific with your campaign goals to a point where you know what KPIs label your campaign a success and where to gather them from is an important first step. Remember to plan before you purchase. 

L’Oreal’s luxury skincare brand, Helena Rubinstein, understood the importance of metrics from the start and set out to run a campaign to increase the awareness for their newly launched POWERCELL Youth Reinforcing Serum with the ultimate goal to increase footfall traffic into its nearby physical stores across Hong Kong. In addition, Helena Rubinstein wanted to precisely measure the effectiveness of the campaign and analyze if for the future campaigns. Having such clear goals allowed Helena Rubinstein to benefit from a finely tuned strategy and by the end of its one month flight time, the campaign generated over 2.5 million impressions, ultimately winning it Gold at The Drum Marketing Awards APAC. In addition, a Footfall Lift Study (FLS) revealed a 382% increase in product awareness, a 3x uplift in footfall traffic to the client's 8 physical stores across Hong Kong and a 231% uplift for new customer recruitment. As we’ve seen, footfall traffic is just one metric that can be measured. In the case of Nulo, a premium American pet food brand, the goal was to drive reach and awareness with active pet parents across the US. With careful audience targeting in place, Nulo was able to achieve an astonishing 40% lift in brand interest (compared to a 25% industry benchmark), amongst other impressive results. 

We can’t mention KPIs in the context of DOOH without talking about impression based metrics. Impression based buying is unique to DOOH in that it offers marketers the opportunity to leverage audience data sets to reach their target market. Quantifying that delivery is important but in client presentations many marketers incorrectly treat impressions the same as online, confusing a one-to-one channel with a one-to-many. OOH differs from online where a single ad served can generate hundreds of views and needs to be calculated differently and customized to every market. Within DOOH,  an impression multiplier is designed to help and combine qualified traffic views and dwell times for each screen per ad play, allowing our industry to better standardize pricing and enable impression based buying. 

To better understand if we are using the right metrics to tell a brand’s story, it’s important for marketers to be clear on what their goals are from the outset. Only then can a campaign set out to drive true business outcomes. There are many other types of measurement metrics that can be applied to a programmatic DOOH campaign, stay tuned for part 2.