Ackland thinks blending ads and content will deliver higher public engagement for all Out of Home formats, cultural relevance and better, sustainable results for advertisers.

Changing the mix

“If television only ever showed ads, no one would watch it. But TV has a well established value exchange where you tune in for half an hour of TV and you get your six or seven minutes of ads,” says Ackland.

“Out of Home has pretty much been 100 per cent ads; we’ve trained audiences to view it as purely an advertising medium. The question we have been posing is what happens when we change that balance and start to introduce dynamic content into the feed using digital out of home?”

The answer has been stronger engagement, which over time will increase the value of oOh!’s inventory and assets, delivering a significant competitive advantage, Ackland suggests.

Mindful moments at Brisbane Airport

As part of the redevelopment and broader media strategy with Brisbane Airport Corporation (BAC), oOh! has created a powerful media solution that complements the busy airport environment. 

The recent Out of Home contract renewal with oOh! provided an opportunity to review BAC’s media strategy across the board and look at innovative ways to incorporate imagery and messaging that appealed to the specific passenger mix while amplifying Brisbane Airports’ ‘uniquely Queensland’ sense of place.

The digitisation of signage allows greater breadth of content scope than static installations, allowing advertisers to refresh creative regularly, while enabling BAC to provide a customer first approach. An example of this is the ‘mindful moments’ content that has been specifically developed by oOh!’s in-house creative team to guide passengers, who may have anxiety about flying, through meditation techniques and breathing exercises. 

So, it’s not all about advertising messaging.

Lifting engagement

The emerging network-wide strategy of mixing content and ads for audiences is already part of oOh!’s strategy in office towers across it’s Office network. Ackland cites Sydney’s Barangaroo precinct for what more is to come from the group. 

“Lawyers, managers, consultants and senior C-suite execs are coming in and out of those buildings all the time. We have screens as they enter the building and then screens in the elevators, which are longer dwell time environments with high frequency where people are engaging with the screen as they take the lift,” says Ackland. 

“What we’re trying to do is blend a mixture of location-based content that adds value to your experience in Barangaroo, mixing advertising and utility to draw in engagement and make these public spaces more useful, entertaining and give people better connection to what’s around them.

“We think public space content has a huge opportunity to be culturally influential and bring a whole new element to the relevance, effectiveness and sustainability of oOh!’s screen network across the country.”