The Unique Advantages of Out-of-Home Advertising

0:00Talk about fraud free. What do you mean by that fraud free meaning a vinyl billboard on a main street in a town. So it's unskippable. It's not subject to ad blockers. It's not subject to cable cutters, folks who will pay subscription services and not want to see any ads. And I think the last thing, the experience that a consumer has with the ad itself, it's not intrusive, right? When you're watching a TV ad, it's breaking up the content that like you actually want to consume, right? You're watching this movie and all of a sudden, here's the ad that like is interruptive. Out of home kind of has this passive experience where it's on your commute, depending on where you're stuck in traffic, right?

0:38It's really hard to over-serve to an intended audience when the format itself exists as such a public domain. Got it.

0:51Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another epic episode of Marketing Trends. This is your host, Jeremy Bergeron. As always, I'm thrilled to be here. I'm super excited because we have another executive from another brand. We've had a few leaders from this company come on our show. I was excited to see this human being come on. Jeremy Flynn is the Senior Vice President of Data Products and Strategy at Clear Channel Outdoors. Now, Jeremy is a trailblazer when it comes to product partnerships, media revenue strategy, operations. I mean, he's serving a really important role there. And he has a pretty remarkable track record of driving innovation through offline media.

1:39So Epic Human Being, we chatted for a while before we pressed record. And I am excited to nerd out with you, Jeremy. Thank you for being on the show. Excited to be here, Jeremy. Also excited to do it with another Jeremy. It's amazing. Seriously, you are the first Jeremy in 2024. We had a Jeremy in 2023. You're the first one in 24. And I'm glad you're here, man. Glad to. Dude, I'm super excited. We had your CMO on, it was last year, I guess, Dan, Dan Levy on. An amazing, amazing human being, dude. And when I saw your name come through, I'm like, yes, another Clear Channel gangster that's going to come chat with us.

2:14So tell us, just give us a quick level set of what your role is there. It's a big organization, but tell us what your role specifically is. What are you nerding out on as the SVP of data products and strategy at Clear Channel? Sure. First of all, I really appreciate being able to be on the show and talk a little bit about what I do. At Clear Channel, my main goal is to help brands and advertisers understand the audience that they get hit with out-of-home campaign and measure the outcomes that they're looking to drive with the consumers that they're trying to reach. And so I've been doing that for the last eight years.

2:46I oversee an analytics platform called Radar. And within Radar, there are solutions that help make Adipham more addressable and measurable. And for a 100-year-old company, it's fresh every single day. There's a new challenge coming up in the marketing ecosystem, it seems, every few months or so. And so staying at the forefront of merging changes and technologies and innovations, that's kind of what gets me up and excited every day to get into the office. Okay. Okay. So clue us in on what are the unique advantages when it comes to out of home in terms of audience targeting compared to digital and TV?

3:29How does Clear Channel capitalize on those kinds of strengths? So first off, it's in the public square. And so it's the only advertising medium where people can observe other people interacting with an advertisement. When you are watching a TV ad, you are in your home by yourself. If you're on your device, it's you experiencing that ad individually. The power of out-of-home is kind of that community or communal experience that can be generated off of it. And there are other things about it, right? It's unskippable. It's bold. It's fraud-free, which is especially an increasing challenge in the advertising ecosystem today.

4:11Talk about fraud-free. What do you mean by that? Fraud-free meaning a vinyl billboard on a main street in a town, it's really hard to over-serve or not deliver an ad to an intended audience when the format itself exists in such a public domain. Got it. So it's unskippable. It's not subject to ad blockers, right? It's not subject to cable cutters, folks who will pay subscription services and not want to see any ads. And I think the last thing, at least in my opinion, is the experience that a consumer has with the ad itself. It's not intrusive, right? When you're watching a TV ad, it's breaking up the content that you actually want to consume, right?

4:58You're watching this movie and all of a sudden here's the ad that like it's interruptive just as like a heavy scene is getting underway. Out of home kind of has this passive experience where it's like on your commute over the course of a month. And like you see it at different vantage points over a given week, depending on where you're stuck in traffic, right? And so like the ad experience is, I think, just very different. I think makes for like other successes when you get into measurement of its ad effectiveness. this. So you touched a little bit earlier, Jeremy, on this idea of like, basically attribution, like data attribution when it comes to out of home.

5:39Can you talk on like, closing the loop on that a little bit? What are you seeing and how are brands actually attributing out of home? Yeah. So I guess just from a couple different perspectives, right? The perception of out of home is that it is not measurable. And I will say that it is. And so how do you kind of develop solutions or products that actually demonstrate to a brand or advertiser that here is how you can measure out-of-home's effectiveness? And I mean, there's a bit of a history of that, which is out-of-home is primarily bought as like a top-of-funnel medium. So driving brand awareness, brand consideration, purchasing.

6:19Right, right. But with the advent of mobile data, we could actually look at consumer behaviors after they have been exposed to out-of-home advertising. And that has really kind of opened up the middle to lower funnel in terms of measurement, right? So now we could track who is seeing an out-of-home ad and what website they are engaging with. Who's seeing an out-of-home ad? And the first thing that we did was actually visiting a retail store location. We're actually the first out-of-home company to measure out-of-home to visitation influence attribution. And now we're in this really awesome space of connecting directly with different analytics companies to measure CPG household sales measurement.

7:00Or if you're a mobile app and you have an MMP, how are we looking at new installs or basket sizes? And truly showing closed-loop attribution in terms of driving out-of-home exposure to tuning into specific content. content. And so we are really measuring media impact. And what that has done is it has allowed us to kind of be compared apples to apples now to other media channels. And the other thing that it's done is we've measured it now for years, meaning we have like a basket of programs now that we could start to look at in terms of benchmarks. I like to say that we're in the hundreds and Google and Facebook are in the thousands or if not millions of measurement programs.

7:41But what we're seeing is this trend, which I think is really cool, which is out of home is the only media channel that is not adversely affected by frequency. In fact, the more someone is exposed to an out of home campaign, the more they exhibit the intended behavior that you're looking to drive. So as an example, if you're looking to get someone to visit your store location, the more they're exposed to a billboard, the more they will visit a store. If you're looking for them to order within a food delivery app, the more they will order and repeat order. So it has this incredible effect in terms of driving loyalty and repeat behavior.

8:19And if you observe kind of the challenges of the other advertising channels, the first thing that CTV had to come out with, if you're YouTube, is frequency capping and putting a limit on the number of ads that a consumer saw when kind of experiencing it. And unfortunately, but fortunately, you cannot frequency static Adipom campaign. You can do it with some of the digital, but you can't in a lot of our campaigns. You can't. And the thing that is kind of a challenge for most other medias is actually a strength of ours. And so getting back to your original question, just setting the measurement up is kind of helping us understand the unique benefits that Adipom actually offers.

9:03I'd say the last thing is just what the expectations need to be, which are other media consistently on a daily or weekly or monthly basis provide insight into how impactful their media is in terms of driving an outcome for a brand. And out of home, at least in the last few years, has only been post-campaign attribution measurement. We're also trying to speed up the speed to insight. And so today we're providing those weekly insights to some of our customers and helping them understand how they're driving outcomes during an out-of-home campaign. And that I think is another moment in our own industry development and how we kind of participate in the omni-channel.

9:48And so measurement is definitely a passion point if you can't pick that up. Yes, I love it. We're doing some cool stuff there. That's amazing. What about advances in geolocation tech that just allow advertisers to target specific demographics and locations even more accurately now? What are you seeing there? So much. And I think that that's kind of what's kept it fresh. When I started, it was about reported location data. So you filled out a report and you said, hey, I was at the Starbucks. And then there was an ability to productize bid stream location data. So location data that was served in a mobile ad but past a location.

10:25And that's not really like the best kind of data to prove to someone, hey, you're driving around and you're looking up, right? Because it's dependent on seeing a mobile ad. So then there is this advent of SDK movement data where you could actually look at background persistent GPS location. And that's kind of still the holy grail of us looking at mobile location data in terms of who's exposed to an advertisement and the behavior that they exhibit afterwards. And then there's this increasing headwind of consumer privacy regulation on the state level. And what does that data mean? And then you have companies like Apple pushing out changes like ATT that restrict the number of apps that you think capture that location data.

11:11And respect for the consumer also really, really matters. And so as we kind of have entered into the sixth or seventh phase of using location data to like drive targeting, you've had to really be nimble and adjust for that overall climate and kind of build like a consumer first privacy centric data platform that uses privacy compliant location data to actually run like the solutions you want to offer to brands and advertisers. And what does that mean? What does that all mean simply? Instead of being weirdly technical, it means that brands and advertisers are able to meet their consumers in the locations and in the context that matters to them.

11:55It helps us uncover the best places for brands to advertise to meet consumers in the moments that matter and in their consumer journey or the journey that they're taking when they're picking their kids up from school. So that's really what the data has enabled for brands and advertisers. Do you think we're moving towards just a pure digital dynamic billboard, like no more static billboards? What do you see happening globally in just the realm of billboards? Well, it depends on if I've watched Blade Runner or Minority Report and there's that hyper-individualized billboard. But yeah, obviously, there's been a lot of conversion to digital screens over the years.

12:39And vinyl billboards are also really beautiful. in the sense that they have a history to them. I don't think that everything will become completely digital on the front end. I do think more things will become digital on the back end. The data solutions that we build, we like to say, are available not only for the digital out-of-home that we execute on, but also the static out-of-home as well, and the airports media, but also the programmatic media that we sell. We try to think of out-of-home irregardless of format. We like to think about it as the strength. And I guess the last point I'll make is it's not the inventory type itself.

13:21What matters is the composition of the audience that is in front of that board, regardless of what type of screen it is. What matters most is making sure that that cohort engages with the ad that is being seen. And that can mean successful targeting or successful creative. right um and so like i care i care more about the audience the out-of-home audience not necessarily like the the type of format that they're exposed to fascinating i mean yeah you've been there almost you've been there almost 10 years right you've been at channel almost is it almost 10 years yeah that's uh yeah i'll be i think it's eight eight or nine yeah okay coming up you're coming up on the decade man i mean because you think about one you think about being in in a in a space and an industry in and around like, cause your perspective around like the data and around like the story that the data has been telling over the past almost decades, just for you being someone who's making sense of it all for brands, you know, it's got, I mean, there's, I don't even know, like there's gotta be so many beautiful stories you're able to tell based on where we're at as, as a world, how we interact with these, this channel in this medium and the overall effectiveness of it.

14:32It's got to be just profound now. And so I imagine many brands are just continuing to trust this continued less intrusive form of advertising compared to other digital ads. It's definitely still at the table in a big way, it sounds like. Yeah. No, I think there's been, at least within the last year, these paradigm shifts. If you talk about preparing for cookie deprecation, what you have are basically folks who have had to rely on online display advertising, which was me. Before coming to Clearchild 10 years ago, I was in digital media. And they've had to start to look at different marketing techniques to continue to perform the jobs that they have within their marketing organization.

15:15And that's led people to work mostly with different kinds of data beyond cookies, first-party CRM data, mobile location data. And I think that that disruption has actually helped in seeing opportunity in using out of home differently within marketing campaigns, either as a tent pole strategy or as like a way of kind of incrementing your audience reach. And so that's been really fun to see kind of coming from the extreme performance end of it on the digital side into, hey, there needs to be a better audience and measurement apparatus in out of home to now we have it and here's how we're executing on it.

15:55And now we're pulling in brands and advertisers into incorporating out of home into their strategy each and every day. Are you seeing more industries or segments really grab onto this? Like they're getting what you're saying. They're understanding like, hey, we've figured this out. Like this is actually a really powerful, like are you seeing as you look across industries, some are pro out of home. They've been there a long time and it's part of their mix. Are you finding other industries catching up? Are you finding industries passing some of the old ones up? What are you seeing just from across the sea and the adoption?

16:30It's a great question. There are really big brands that have always come to out of home to tell their story or punch above their weight. Historically, Apple has been an incredible out of home advertiser when they were out of money in the 80s. And they decided, hey, we have to still run this think different campaign. Let's put a billboard up on the 101. right? And they did that. And McDonald's and Snapchat, huge percentages of their overall marketing spend have been historically in and out of home. And so, if some of the Fortune 100 brands recognize that their media investment should be between 10 % and 20 % in and out of home, you then start to look at, well, what are some of the under leveraged segments and who's starting to move in that direction.

17:20So I'm happy to say that because measurement has improved, we're able to pull in verticals like CPG because we're able to measure things like incremental new purchasers of consumer packaged good brands at the household level. And so we're able to make a convincing argument to say, hey, here's the impact that an out-of-home campaign can drive for your brand. And that holds true for legacy CPG brands as much as if you want to do a product launch for your brand and you don't have a consumer base yet, it's a really good way of reaching a mass audience, right? And so we've seen that be the case within CPG.

18:00We've seen pharmaceutical advertising increase. We've also started to see app-based, traditionally performance marketing companies recognize the need to pull back on performance marketing expectations that maybe is set by their board level and know that, hey, we've reached a point of diminished returns on acquiring customers. How do we increase our lead gen or how do we increase the kinds of customers that could be adopters of our product? And so highly technical, innovative brands are turning to Adipone to actually drive that long-term brand effectiveness that they need. to survive. Are you seeing more of the startup kind of world?

18:44I mean, because, you know, tech giants and a lot of them frequently use out of home, right? You got Apple and Coca-Cola, right? These brands we all know and love and startups oftentimes I feel like could miss it. Like they could, they could be using out of home to build brand. Like you said, build brand awareness, especially in tech hubs, you know, in areas that are frequented by their demographic. But Are you finding the startup world like wake up to out of home more? Are you still seeing a lot of people missing it? No, no. And I'm also based in San Francisco. So I'm especially biased to seeing it.

19:16They know that they need to be here to communicate to a venture capital audience. Most venture capital is still determined out here in the Bay Area. And so a startup definitely recognizes that a way to punch above their weight is to actually advertise in this market. and they have to grow the number of customers that they have. And so successful startups have deployed a strategy to go into satellite markets beyond San Francisco. So they might like do a launch of a new capability or there's like a conference for Snowflake or Databricks and they want to communicate to that audience that is coming into San Francisco or Dreamforce.

19:55And then they decide, okay, now I need to go grow customers in the middle of the country. So like, let me run a campaign with you in Texas or let me run a campaign with you in Minneapolis. And so part of that growth strategy though is rooted again in being able to measure effectiveness, right? So how do we look at new customers that are acquired for like a startup in some of those expansion markets that they might be interested in? And so we play a really big role with our teams internally in thinking through that market design or that like growth of a crawl, walk, run of like starting in one place and going to another market.

20:33And that's not just for tech brands. That's for quick service restaurants opening up in new markets across the country. That's for regional CPG products that now want to go national, right? So like it's a strategy that we employ a lot. I know you probably have a folder full of, you know, amazing creative campaigns that you've seen, you know, over the years. But I would just love to hear you touch on, yeah, some that have been really innovative to you. Some of the things you're seeing, Maybe you can mention them brands. Maybe you can just mention the industries that they serve. But we'd just love to hear some of the really creative things you're seeing out in the space of out-of-home and who's doing it really well, if you can say.

21:11If not, just maybe some of the mechanics of what's making these campaigns kick ass. Sure. So you mentioned verticals that get it. One that I was particularly interested in were kind of the DTC brands, the direct-to-consumer, because they don't have physical retail locations. And so the successful DTCs almost leveraged out of home as their own store, right? So ones that I've seen be really successful is in commerce districts in cities where if you go to a different city, they have the same stores. They have the high fashion store, right? And it's typically the same brand again and again. DTCs were employing out of home advertising on those streets when they did not have a store.

21:59And then eight months later, they had a store. And so it was almost like a way of testing, should I invest in retail by leveraging Adipum? So that was a particularly successful one or area. Is that like the kind of the Warby Parker, Casper? Was that that kind of model? I know Warby Parker definitely used out of home to highlight their eyewear. Yeah. Yeah. Are those some of the brands you're mentioning? I think Glossier was another one, Allbirds, right? HelloFresh, some of these brands that really doubled down on out of home before they went retail. Yes. Yes. And when they did go retail, we had this really nice follow-up of saying, hey, now we could also measure consumers who are visiting your store location and how impactful out of home was in driving that increased foot traffic.

22:48In terms of others, like during the pandemic, essential workers, right? So I really love seeing the restaurants that had to remain open, how their advertising changed. And again, we applied some measurement to say, all right, yes, the number of visits to your store have gone down, but the influence of out of home and making sure that when people needed to go get a meal, they still came to your restaurant or the delivery worker came and picked up an order. like we were able to to measure that and that there was that was like a context shift in how like creative messaging was delivered it was like thank thanking essential workers uh and using out of home to communicate that to like the communities in which they were in and then there's like the ones that are just fun like i will i will name this because i think it's iconic in san francisco but i think airbnb does a really good job running advertising the billboard's like on top of its headquarters in SF, I'm pretty sure.

23:47And they just deploy creative and language just incredibly well, where you might just be driving back to the East Bay where I drive to, and you just sit there, and you're in traffic, and you're annoyed about being in traffic, but you're not because you're seeing a lot of billboards, and you're smiling at the new ad that Airbnb has put up. And I think that they're an interesting brand too, because they have historically pulled back on performance marketing and tried to really double down on brand marketing. And I like, I'm especially interested in brands that make that strategic choice. And if they've realized like any gains or successes from those choices.

24:30Yeah. Okay. Touch on that. Touch on this, the balance of performance marketing and brand marketing and talk to a lot of executives who maybe steer one way or the other or avoid going there on which one we should focus on? What's your perspective and opinion on it? I think I have a strong opinion, so I'll just say that up. Great. We love them. We love it. But I do think that most marketing organizations are set up with their growth team and their performance team, and they sit separately to convince the CMO what budgets they should have allocated to them. And part of what I think we should be doing as media owners is trying to break down that silo a bit.

25:09And I would say that out-of-home delivers great top of funnel outcomes and is also a performance channel. And I can measure both of those things. And if I measure the mid to lower funnel outcomes, I have already proven that I've also delivered the top of funnel outcomes. And so being able to measure the whole stack is the kind of measurement and attribution and audience insights that I typically like to take to both a performance based audience, as well as a growth based audience when I'm at a brand. And that has been really fun over the years, just because when you're dealing with a performance marketing organization, you get access to testing budgets, right?

25:48And so if you have something that can be measured, you're able to test. And then with growth folks, like you get to think about longer term campaigns and what primary strategies and secondary strategies a brand team has, and how do you like advance like really strong audience targeting to help a brand like win on the growth strategy that they have to have over like a year or two year period. I think the other thing, especially with like coming out of COVID and a lot of the economic uncertainty, what we are seeing as a trend is a lot of capital is drying up for performance marketing. There's a lot of harder questions about how successful performance marketing has been achieved at organizations.

26:30And like that has kind of promulgated like a shift into more brand marketing efforts. Because when the economy is struggling, the number one thing a brand has to do is increase trust with its consumer. And the way to increase trust with the consumer is actually to run brand marketing. And so that's really where I think out of them kind of comes really nicely into play because it can do both. I don't know. That's kind of been an area of deep interest for me lately. It's key in today's rapidly evolving digital landscape. I see this as well. Businesses, they're recognizing this critical need to balance performance marketing with brand marketing, right?

27:12And that balance is not going away. And you talk about a channel like Out of Home, where you can really get the best of both worlds all the way through. And performance marketing focuses on this immediate, like you said, measurable result, conversation, sales, things like that. Brand marketing, it builds the long-term brand equity. It's important. And customer loyalty, it's equally important. So brands that are increasingly shifting their strategies to integrate both and do both really well, like you said, shout out Clear Channel. They're doing it well, so pay attention. But it's going to be key.