Combining Social Media with Out-of-Home Advertising to optimise your exposure potential.

Data recently released by Route, the outdoor media analytics research company has reaffirmed that out-of-home advertising is the most wide reaching medium in Great Britain. This supports Facebook’s latest study into combining out-of-home advertising strategies with promotions on social media. By using an amalgamation of more traditional public (Billboard and Poster) mediums with online promotions in the form of posts and pop ups set to carefully constructed algorithms, all bases are covered. 

Facebook confirmed that 4/10 adults they surveyed said they had visited a Facebook page or posted to Facebook after seeing an Out-of-home advert, with 25% having posted to Instagram. According to another study conducted by Nielson more than 40% searched for a brand online after seeing an out-of-home advertisement, while 74% of people who visited a business after seeing a directional out-of-home advertisement made a purchase.

Billboard advertisements are increasingly been considered as retro and cool, exacerbating their impact on younger audiences especially. See for example this picture of Bella Hadid, posing for a photo in front of her Soho Billboard. This is particularly relevant for advertisers in Leeds hoping to reach the huge student population. 

With the development of Digital Screens (like our own 8m x 8m full motion screen in Leeds Kirkgate Market) moving, back-lit images become impossible to miss. Highly penetrable to the public eye, studies show that each week, 93% of Leeds citizens will see a digital screen. 

Look no further than the infamous Brexit bus as an example of how the physical can command our attention and sell us an idea.

Whilst digital continues to take the limelight, the strength of traditional poster sites is not diminished, as they continue to deliver to significant audiences and provide ubiquitous cover. When you look at out-of-home, you see huge canvases in real life — they are unavoidable, with no room for fraud, and when you layer this with the ability to amplify through social channels you are on to a winner.

A Billboard advertisement is dynamic, geofence and real time, reaching audiences at all stages of the sales funnel. It seems that rather than technology and outdoor advertising being at war with one another, they combine to create an advertising force to be reckoned with.