Yes, that’s where it’s at. The success and future of DOOH is in being fast and smart. One without the other and you’re a plan with no action or equally as bad, plenty of action but no plan.

It’s moving fast and it’s thrilling for those of us in the midst of it, but we are creating something new and need to ensure it is fit for purpose and that its purpose is clear. Clients need to understand how DOOH is developing and what new aspects like programmatic - or pDOOH - can mean for them.

However, first of all, we need to learn from the past. This digital world has the chance to take us down a black hole of automation that disguises transparency. When this happens, advertisers lose the control and visibility they want and need and frankly no one wins.

Stripping all the advancement of DOOH back to basics, we think of it as OOH with digital online strengths. So, from the get-go we know it’s the best of two powerful media - but it’s the more powerful. Powerful as in capable of delivering huge reach as DOOH, but with pDOOH also capable of generating highly targeted messages. Where the infamous marketing funnel is concerned - it’s top, bottom and middle. DOOH enhanced by pDOOH, has the capacity to deal with messages at brand or purchase level, at mass or targeted level.

This is enough to give DOOH a regular seat at the media planning table, but there are a couple of additional things that make it the channel of choice to address key advertiser issues right now. In this sometimes indiscreet digital environment, media owners need to hold brand safety and privacy as fundamental attributes, but this is not equally possible across all channels.

As we incorporate more data into our platform, we are building a picture which is contextually as precise as possible, using real life data. This contextual picture is the best possible proxy for individual data - but without transgressing privacy issues. And it works particularly well, for brands with very specific, niche target audiences.

Tourism Tropical North Queensland, for example, wanted to raise awareness of a specific itinerary promotion to target South East Queenslanders who owned a campervan or caravan. By creating a bespoke audience in Foursquare, we were able to programmatically display the campaign to this niche audience when in proximity to our digital screens, ensuring we maximised reach across this specific target audience, whilst minimising wastage.

For the last three years, we have quietly been building our knowledge but doing it at pace. Like a dolphin, we’ve gone fast but kept it smart. The very balanced perspective we have on how to capitalise on DOOH and within that, the specific opportunities for pDOOH comes from this approach. By working with the new horizon that pDOOH has established, we have been able to propose a programmatic solution for advertisers where they can shift from brand awareness to targeted sales with speed, accuracy and efficiency.

There’s more to come for sure. But for now, pDOOH is the newest enhancement to DOOH and using it well has the capability to be a real business growth channel for advertisers. We just need to stay dolphin.