What is out-of-home (OOH) advertising?

What does out-of-home advertising mean?

It’s a category of advertising covering anything you see outside of your home (that sometimes crosses over with ambient advertising).

OOH advertising is a way to splash your brand into the physical world, where people can see your message out and about on their commute, walking the dog, shopping in town, or catching a flight.

The best thing about OOH advertising is that it’s been shown to have the highest levels of consumer recall compared to other advertising channels (up to 86%).

Wherever you want to reach your audience, from campuses for students, engaging with bored commuters, or directing customers to your store, OOH advertising allows you to target people in a variety of environments.

Why use out-of-home advertising?

While 80% of working adults experience information overload, OOH advertising cuts through the digital noise.

In an era of fake social media ads, displaying your message on a billboard or bus stop also helps to build trust in your brand, reinforcing awareness with multiple touchpoints as your audience moves through the location and their day.

We’ll recommend OOH advertising to clients who are aiming for scale and impact. From large formats to attention-grabbing visuals and a clever choice of location, these adverts work particularly well for retail messages and raising awareness.

If you want to explore OOH advertising for your brand, our team at Hello Starling can help you plan and buy media to add the most value to your campaign. From digital billboards to bikes, trains and stadiums, find out more about our out-of-home advertising services here.

Out-of-home advertising examples

To help you understand what’s possible, here are three examples of OOH campaigns we’ve delivered for our clients:

Visit Shropshire

Shropshire gave us Charles Darwin, the world’s first skyscraper, 32 castles, 25 hillforts and an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Not bad for one county. In the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, Visit Shropshire wanted to encourage more people out of their homes to visit this special place.

We worked together on an integrated campaign that resulted in a 200% increase in website visitors during the course of their advertising.

Continuing our work together, we’ve now planned and bought over 660 out-of-home panels across the UK, including bus stops, train stations, billboards and pavement screens, reaching hundreds of thousands of people.

Take a look inside the campaign:

Brecon Carreg

Welsh mineral water brand, Brecon Carreg asked us to plan and buy media for their campaign to raise brand affinity, increase their social media following and raise in-store sales.

When planning your OOH advertising, it’s worth considering how to reach the right people at the right time and in the right place.

For Brecon Carreg, we paired in-store media on shopping trolleys with digital and OOH advertising to encourage consideration from busy shoppers. The campaign also succeeded in gaining Brecon Carreg 5,250 new followers.

Watch the video here:

Visit Orkney

We worked on an OOH campaign with Visit Orkney to reach millions of commuters on the London Underground.

Combining stunning visuals of Orkney with the messaging, ‘from Orkney with love,’ we were able to drive a 74% increase in website traffic.

See the campaign here:

You can find more of our case studies here.

How to measure out-of-home advertising

Research shows 79% of people have taken action after seeing OOH advertising. How we measure the success of these campaigns has progressed with modern tools making it easier to track ROI.

When evaluating your OOH campaign, you can look for:

• Footfall and location data - Geolocation tracking can tell you how many people pass a particular site and connect this data to your in-store visits, web traffic, or online searches as a result.
• Surveys - Conducting a survey before and after your campaign can be a simple way to understand awareness and recall rates among your target audience.
• QR codes and specific call to actions - By asking your target audience to visit a specific page, search for a keyword or use a QR code, you can link your OOH advertising to measurable online behaviour. For example, an effective campaign can drive a 38% increase in mobile engagement between consumers and brands.