What is media quality and why is it important?
Media quality is an ever-expanding topic that includes brand safety, brand suitability, viewability, user experience, and fraud. In online advertising, low quality is synonymous with chaotic, inappropriate, or made for advertising (MFA) content that results in wasted ad spend. Thankfully, programmatic digital out of home (pDOOH) is not plagued by these issues – but that doesn’t mean that all pDOOH advertising is of equal quality and value.
What impacts quality in programmatic DOOH?
In pDOOH, quality can be addressed through three angles: the environment and the screen on which the ad will be played, the audience targeting used to activate the ad, and the creative itself.
The environment in which an ad is displayed and the screen on which it is shown are the primary factors that will influence consumers’ perception of, and reception to, the brand’s messaging. Showing even the best creative in a low-end environment or on a poor-quality screen is a good way to waste budget. When assessing the quality of pDOOH inventory, advertisers and agencies need to understand the nature of the environment (rail, roadside, retail, airport, etc.), the positioning and resolution of the screen itself, and style or functionality of the infrastructure around the screen.
Our screens are designed and made based on four criteria: quality, style, functionality, and environmental performance. This means adhering to eco-friendly design, strength and durability criteria, low energy consumption, air pollution monitoring, and the use of recyclable materials. Innovation enables us to anticipate constantly changing needs, to provide services to the public, to enhance the passenger experience, and to contribute to the evolution of the smart city. We also conduct regular, proactive maintenance of all our screens to ensure they are always in prime condition.
Leveraging programmatic capabilities from premium media owners enables buyers to benefit from maximum reach by taking advantage of all relevant screens while mitigating against the risk of your ads showing on low-quality screens with poor resolution in locations where they may not be seen by the right audience or, if they are seen, go unnoticed due to the nature of the location.
How does audience targeting impact quality?
Tactically, running ads on screens where your target audience is most likely to be increases the overall quality of your pDOOH campaign. This is particularly true if, for example, your audience moves around a lot, or if your messaging benefits from real-time updates. The challenge facing pDOOH buyers is that the accuracy, and therefore, the quality, of audience data varies dramatically.
When evaluating different sources of audience data it is important to consider:
How is the data collected?
How frequently is the data updated?
Can the data be easily integrated into your chosen demand-side platform (DSP)
Are you able to overlay additional data to create bespoke audience segments?
Can you accurately measure the impact of adding the data source to your targeting?
JCDecaux has partnered with multiple audience data providers to give you the most accurate, up-to-date audience data upon which to start planning your campaigns. These include YouGov, Route, CACI, BT, Experian, dunnhumby, AdSquare, and many more. Furthermore, though our supply-side platform (SSP) VIOOH, we offer seamless integrations with all leading DSPs enabling you to combine our audience data with that provided by your DSP partner, all in a privacy-safe way.
Sustainability in pDOOH
Sustainability has been at the heart of our business ever since our founder Jean Claude Decaux came up with the idea of providing bus shelters free-of-charge to councils, paid for by the advertising on them. Today we continue to develop innovative solutions that help cities and our partners prosper and grow, staying true to the vision of our founder to integrate sustainability into the fabric of our products and our services.
Quantifying the environmental impact of digital advertising is a complex challenge, as there are numerous hidden factors to consider. To fully grasp advertising emissions, advertisers must analyse the entire lifecycle - from production to distribution – across the entire media mix. However, pDOOH buyers can take actionable steps to reduce their carbon footprint by, for example, optimising their supply chain (SPO) to prioritise media owners and data providers committed to using renewable and low-emission energy sources. Also, when planning omnichannel campaigns, it is important to factor in the fact that pDOOH ad impressions reach more than one individual, therefore, carbon emissions per impression are not comparable to, for example, mobile where a single person views a single impression.
Why quality matters – the bigger picture
Quality media is a differentiator for premium publishers in a market that is becoming increasingly commoditised and fragmented. Benchmark criteria of viewability, brand safety, and sustainability will get us so far but by going above and beyond those signals and achieving quality standards that stand apart from a peer group, media owners can better serve advertisers by providing premium environments that align with brand messaging efforts.
Programmatic DOOH offers brands the optimal blend of premium media placements, brand safety, audience targeting, and thus extremely high overall quality and return on media investment.
This article originally appeared on The Media Leader.