The modern, digital native advertisers are always looking to run very effective and targeted campaigns. That means, giving the right message, to the right audience at the right time! That’s easy if we were running digital ads, but can we do that on OOH screens?

Yes, Programmatic DOOH is now a phenomenon, which opens a world of opportunities both for media owners and advertisers.

What is pDOOH?

It is where DOOH inventory is sold and purchased automatically in real-time, by computers. Essentially, DOOH inventory is traded in real time, based on the buying criteria defined by the buyer and the conditions put forth by the media owner. pDOOH platforms make use of real-time signals to target audiences whom the advertiser requires.

The Power of Data

One of the key differences between plain DOOH and pDOOH is the layer of data which enables advertisers to make informed decisions, giving them desired campaign results. It is important for media owners to partner with the right tech solutions provider to ensure that they harvest this power of data. 

Advantages of pDOOH to Media Owners

·        Programmatic OOH blends the sharp audience targeting and convenient media buying capabilities of programmatic with the high impact and reach of OOH.

·        It reduces the complexity of buying OOH media by opening the available inventory to a larger base of buyers who can place ads in pDOOH enabled screens from anywhere in the world.

·        Improved targeting capabilities of audiences and improved campaign measurements would attract more budgets from performance driven advertisers and specialized digital agencies.

·        Media owners have great flexibility and control over their inventory. Premium inventory can be sold through private marketplaces, whereas unsold inventory can be monetized through multiple DSP’s.

How does pDOOH work?

·        Advertiser briefs agency on the campaign objectives, performance parameters and target audience

·        Based on the brief, the agency would define the parameters for the campaign such as targeted location, and other data parameters as well as their ceiling price.

·        This purchase request is sent through a DSP, which would look for suitable inventory which suits the advertiser requirements in multiple SSP’s

·        This goes through the DSP either in an open auction (Open RTB) or private marketplace (PMP), transacts with an Exchange or SSP for the agreed bid or sale.

·        The ad is then served across the appropriate screen or screens and the transaction is complete.

·        The data from the campaigns are recorded when the spots are executed and the measurement data is sent back to the advertiser.

Getting started with pDOOH

Working with the right partner who provides a complete solution is vital for media owners to gain maximum value from their inventory.Location Media Xchange (LMX), with a proprietary tech stack for automating all aspects of the OOH media business, provides an end-to-end solution for media owners to make their inventory available for programmatic buying and expose them to the largest and most popular omnichannel and specialist Demand Side Platforms or DSPs.

In a highly competitive and congested industry, knowing the ins and outs of supply side platforms (SSP) will give you the upper hand. Better yet, knowing what key features you should seek will help you be more specific and your campaign more effective. 

The global Programmatic Digital Out-of-Home (pDOOH) market is forecasted to hit 4.48 billion dollars by 2027. The increased transactions from both brands and media agencies in programmatically booked campaigns presents the opportunity for media owners in the industry to access new revenues and get a bigger piece of the pie from the total ad spend.

Enabling a pDOOH campaign can be as simple as approving a friend request on facebook, provided you possess the relevant planning and trading systems and softwares. But what system do you need to get started with programmatic?

You need a software that allows you to make your inventory available to media buyers – a supply-side platform (SSP).

What Is a Supply-Side Platform?

An SSP is a piece of advertising technology (AdTech) that allows you to streamline and automate the selling process of your DOOH inventory. It connects your screens to new markets and disparate media buyers. 

One major aspect of an SSP is that it is designed to sell your inventory at the highest possible price based on the bids received. Like in a real life auction, the highest bidder wins the item they are bidding for, your inventory will be allocated to the highest bidder, hence, making you more money. 

A platform like this allows your inventory to be booked from afar. Cross-border deals can be closed without the hassle of negotiating.

One thing to keep in mind is that not all SSPs are created the same way. Some may not have the features to fulfill certain nuances of the DOOH industry. 

Here are some key features to consider when choosing an SSP for your business.

Connect inventory to multiple DSPs

Advertisers like brands and media agencies use demand-side platforms (DSP) to book, build, manage and analyze campaigns from one central spot. 

Having an SSP that connects to various DSPs will ensure your inventory is more visible and reaches more potential buyers, increasing the probability of sales of your outdoor screens.

Increase Efficiency of Selling Process

An SSP allows media owners like you to automate your inventory selling process. You will be able to manage the distribution of your screens to advertisers from one location. 

The traditional way of doing this is to be physically present, manually assigning ad to the selected site.

Automating your business will not just save you time, but it will also help you cut operational costs.

Integrated Content Management System (CMS)

A CMS is a software or platform that allows you to deliver the correct content to the correct audience at the right time. You will be able to create, modify and distribute content remotely.

You will also be able to monitor all the digital screens in your network from your computer or mobile device.

All you will have to do as a digital screen owner is to manage the schedule of your content and leave the rest to your CMS.

Provides or Enables Integration to Audience Measurement

The tipping point where Programmatic DOOH will become the preferred choice of activating outdoor advertising will be driven by the availability of data. This could be industry standard data on impressions, audience intent data, and so on.

With the advancement of technology, media owners like you can access audience data in your hands if the SSP your inventory is on has an audience based measurement feature.

You will be able to access unbiased location-specific data directly from your SSP and this could act as the foundation to preparing detailed proposals and reports for your advertisers.

Conclusion

Supply-side platforms will help you deal with the growing demand for out-of-home advertising. Getting your hands on the right platform with the right features should allow you to increase your revenue. 

The right SSP should also keep evolving with times to ensure that your business is protected at all times.

In just a few months, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought drastic changes into the way people live their everyday lives.

Nevertheless, the accessibility of advanced technology such as big data, artificial intelligence (AI) and more, has allowed OOH operators to combine efforts to provide immersive offline experiences despite the on-going pandemic crisis.

Digital out-of-home (DOOH) has the ability to connect the touch points of consumers throughout the day.

Given the current situation that is full of uncertainties, consumer experience should be prioritized. Covid-19 has unexpectedly accelerated the advancement of digital technology, giving marketers the ability to integrate their business goals, and strategies while offering a rich experience at every stage of the customer’s journey.

Hence, the adoption of content management system (CMS) will be the key for you to promote active audience participation and unique interaction. You should look at it as a part of a larger customer experience management capability.

Today’s highly connected customers have greater expectations and preferences about how and when they want to engage with a brand.

Businesses that deliver seamless experiences will develop trust and loyalty that result in increased conversions, higher revenues and more lifetime customer value.

To achieve these outcomes, you should invest in digital transformation, particularly the CMS that will drive consistency in the customer experience.

Consistent and Unified

The focal point of every OOH player has changed to looking for a more consistent and relevant way of delivering their services and product details.

The integration between a CMS and an inventory platform will ensure the experience you deliver is seamless and relevant throughout the buying transaction.

You should always look for the ability to connect to databases and web services that do not require complex steps.

Branding helps to differentiate your business from others and allows consumers to easily recognize your business offerings.

Hence, a consistent brand fosters trust and credibility towards your business.

However, providing a seamless experience and maintaining brand consistency in customer journey became more challenging given the growing channels on various devices at different times throughout the day.

For this reason, optimising your CMS makes creating consistent experiences possible at each consumer’s touch points and across different platforms.

Flexible and Dynamic

Furthermore, the existing method of content distribution can be time-consuming as marketers are required to tender or propose a selection of locations to distribute content.

Through CMS, marketers will be assisted in deciding the right time and location to display the right content on digital signages for targeted audiences.

Therefore, content distribution and management can be managed more effectively using an administration panel, allowing content to be delivered more dynamically to audiences.

Plus, media owners are starting to realise the needs to globalise their inventory and be the first choice among the media buyers.

A bundle of inventories will become highly accessible to all advertisers and marketers, providing flexibility of the medium to target the relevant audience.

COVID-19 has called for more enhanced consumer experiences since the new norm involves higher usage of mobile media.

Consumer experience has become an indispensable element in prompting marketers to adopt CMS as a solution to encourage audience involvement and interaction.

CMS is an incredible tool for maintaining consistency in brand and for managing and distributing content more effectively. 

For businesses seeking to achieve operational efficiency through workflow automation while maintaining security, LMX Content offers the right solution with automated dynamic content scheduling and real-time ad-serving.

The platform also provides businesses with both options of public cloud and private cloud in order to have complete control.

DOOH campaigns that come in different types and formats can also be supported and served traditionally, dynamically and programmatically.

A supply-side platform has blessed digital advertisers and publishers with automation functionality. The ad exchange space is constantly changing, hence it is critical to understand how an SSP selects an ad to be displayed on a specific ad inventory.

This is because the process depends on the following features of a supply-side platform:

Target audience selection

With SSP, publishers are able to manage their ad slots as per the needs of specific localised audiences and advertisers.

SSP helps in building a comprehensive portrait of the audience by adding another layer of meaning with location data.

Publishers can ensure different vendors from all over the world can have access to the same ad space.

Publishers can also get a higher CPM for in-demand impressions and niche audiences as SSP enhances data management capabilities with a reliable data management platform (DMP).

This platform usually has additional connections to external sources of data for advanced traffic analysis, audience segmentation, and impressions.

Real-time transactions

Compatibility for real-time bidding (RTB) is possibly the most important feature of a supply-side platform.

Advertisers can use their DSP to bid for ad space on a popular article or video. As the SSP defines the bid range, the DSP will automatically offer a price that’s mutually beneficial.

Then the SSP looks at the available bids to select the best ad – all in real-time.

However, a mismatch between the advertiser’s requirements and the publisher’s availability might occur.

When this happens, SSP will modify the parameters to minimise the possibility of the inventory going unutilised. SSP will help leverage historic data from the advertiser (i.e average bids) to fine-tune parameters accordingly. 

Data-rich impressions

The supply-side platform organises publishers’ data to offer precise targeting options for brands and advertisers.

With the help of the supply side platform, publishers offer impressions with extensive context based on user behaviour and preferences. 

SSPs also add the geographical dimension to impressions by supplying them with geolocation data.

Mobile SSP can also provide a more precise geotargeting depending on the type of connection of the device.

What Do We Offer?

LMX provides an innovative supply-side solution for media owners to optimise their inventory management and automate OOH selling and buying processes.

LMX offers automated dynamic content scheduling and real-time ad-serving for businesses seeking to achieve operational efficiency.

The platform also provides two options of public cloud and private cloud for businesses to have complete control.

DOOH campaigns that come in different types and formats can also be supported and served traditionally, dynamically and programmatically.

Advertising technology investments have been moving closer to digital advertising media. This shift hugely depends on the usage of supply-side platforms (SSPs), where it is responsible for mediating the allocation of ad content in the publishing space. 

SSPs is an advertising tool and technology that helps media owners manage and optimise their ad inventories.

The platform manages media owners’ ad space information and enables them to automate their inventories selling process, coordinate the supply and distribution of inventory to and from advertisers.

Previously, media owners used manual means when doing any selling transactions.

This requires them to manually assign an ad to each OOH space.

However, with the increasing adoption of digital OOH and programmatic advertising, an effective SSP is very much needed to cater to a large number of competitive advertisers.

Digital ads comprise nearly half of the world’s total advertising spends and much of this depends on supply-side platforms.

Media owners utilise SSPs to optimise their inventory usage to avoid media wastage and increase cost-efficiency.

A supply-side platform performs a critical function for digital advertisers and publishers.

Without it, publishers would be limited to a small set of advertisers as it isn’t possible to evaluate so many bids without automation.

Working together with and on a similar technology as demand-side platforms (DSP), SSPs take stock of a media owners’ total inventory, evaluate the advertisers and content available, and recommend the best match for every OOH space.

Supply-side platforms evaluate advertisers, set the bidding range, and place the content in real-time.

This happens through several micro-transactions across the digital advertising supply chain. A typical supply-side platform checks each bid until it arrives at the perfect fit, passing from one to the next.

Plus, there are other challenges of not using an SSP: From the rapid evolution of programmatic ads to location intelligence and mobile retargeting – SSP technology has come a long way.

LMX provides an innovative supply-side solution for media owners to optimise their inventory management and automate OOH selling and buying processes.

For businesses seeking to achieve operational efficiency through workflow automation while maintaining security, LMX offers the right solution with automated dynamic content scheduling and real-time ad-serving.

The platform also provides businesses with both options of public cloud and private cloud in order to have complete control.

DOOH campaigns that come in different types and formats can also be supported and served traditionally, dynamically and programmatically.