How is narrowcasting changing the DOOH landscape?

Introduction

The out-of-home advertising industry is being rocked by digital disruption, and Digital Out-Of-Home (DOOH) advertising is no exception to it. Digital Technologies are offering out-of-home advertisers the scope to narrowcast their advertisements and make them more appealing to prospective customers. In this article, we discuss how these developments are shaping the DOOH advertising landscape in India.

The traditional OOH adverts are usually disseminated using “broadcasting” technology with a message that is beamed at every passerby. These ads have many inherent limitations due to which their impact is low and reach wider audiences who might never become potential customers for a brand. The world has today moved over to “narrowcasting” technology, which allows advertisers to deliver content that is better aligned with audience needs and preferences. This facilitates hyper-targeting and helps brands in reaching only those people who are likely to patronize their products or services.

How exactly does it work?

Narrowcasting is a technique where users or viewers can be targeted by an advertiser according to their interests, demographics, and location without broadcasting their entire campaign throughout the entire area covered by billboards. In this way, narrowcasting allows advertisers not only greater reach but also lower costs because they need not invest in large media buys across large areas if only a small percentage of viewers will actually see their message as opposed to broadcasted across all locations

Narrowcasting is a data-driven approach to audience targeting and media planning that aims to deliver relevant content to the right consumer at the right time. Often, it uses sophisticated algorithms, predictive modeling, and machine learning techniques based on behavioral data from consumers (or other sources) as well as their interests and behaviors.

Narrowcasting is often used in conjunction with other marketing strategies such as email or social media advertising campaigns.

The Need for Narrowcasting

Narrowcasting is unique in the sense that it enables brands to deliver pinpoint messages and content to specific targets, who can then be induced into taking some desired action such as making a purchase or downloading an app etc. This could not have been possible using the traditional technology platforms where the advertiser doesn’t know anything about his target audience and can only bombard them with generic messages which they may not even find relevant. Some of the key benefits associated with narrowcasting include:

• Better engagement - Since there is no need for any manual targeting process, it's much easier for marketers to create effective campaigns using narrowcast techniques. Additionally, audience information allows for a more tailored and dynamic creative.
• Better ROI - Narrowing down your target audience will help improve conversion rates across all channels/media types by reducing wastage while also increasing brand recall & familiarity levels among potential customers.
• Better measurement: Narrowcasting is more measurable. As a result, it's easier to see how your efforts are working and what results you should be looking for in order to ensure your campaign is successful. This allows you to make adjustments as needed without having to wait until the end of the campaign—or worse after someone has converted for a competitor.
• Better privacy: In contrast to digital marketing, narrowcasting in the DOOH space is not done at a user level, but utilizes geo and macro level datapoint to club users into small cohorts, therefore making it privacy compliant.?

At AdonMo, we leverage cohort-level data points to enable hyper-targeting on our digital screens, which allows a brand to be more relevant, creative, and impactful in its messaging. At the same time, it prevents a viewer from being bombarded with irrelevant ads, making the advertising experience more pleasurable for them. In a recent survey administered by AdOnMo, over 80% of respondents reported that ads on the AdOnMo screen create an impact on their awareness of a brand. Delivering context through technology is essentially what Narrowcasting means and what AdOnMo does.

Author: Abhishek Thakur

Visit www.adonmo.com to learn more.