Craig Benner, CEO and founder of Accretive [1], has some predictions for what this coming year may bring.
[2]Here is what he shared with us…
- OOH will be recognized as a performance channel
Smart marketers already know that OOH is a performance channel. In 2024, this will gain even more steam that will be made abundantly clear to the wider industry. OOH is an effective channel. It’s always been effective. It just needed to be proven. Previously, the targeting and, more importantly, measurement in OOH was lacking but that’s no longer the case.
- Digital’s problems- and lack of ‘additive’ innovation- will continue to plague marketers
While open web advertising is popular with advertisers, the channel is plagued with problems that were only realized after the fact, such as fraud, viewability, etc. As such, most innovation in digital is only meant to fix these issues, leading to no true meaningful improvement to the channel. In contrast, OOH doesn’t face any of these issues, so all current innovation is squarely focused on increasing the value of the channel for brands. As a result, 2024 will see marketers start to re-allocate funds and increase OOH’s share.
- Brands will use alternative Super Bowl strategies
With $7M Super Bowl spots already sold out, brands will need to think differently about the event. The good news is there is hope. Using a combination of OOH, CTV, and social media, brands can spend dramatically less than the cost of a Super Bowl TV spot and garner the same reach/more impact. With a little elbow grease, a beautiful 14×48’ creative, and a 30 second spot that can still win a Cannes Lion award next June, brands can realize similar reach, cache, content adjacency, earned media, build-up, and post-Super Bowl buzz. They may just not get to say they spent $7M on a Super Bowl spot.
- CTV will solve its issues by following in the footsteps of OOH
OOH measurement is more advanced than CTV’s measurement equivalent… Yeah, I said it. CTV can learn a lot from its much older, but just as rapidly innovating, advertising brethren in 2024. So the blueprint is already there to measure broadcast meaningfully. With eMarketer projecting CTV ad spend at over $40B by 2027, there are just too many eyeballs on CTV and too many problems in core digital (and linear TV) to not take advantage of this opportunity to fix measurement. 2024 will be the year that CTV takes a page from OOH and find a way.
- Politics are going out of home in 2024
It’s going to be a huge year for OOH if for nothing else but the 2024 election cycle. Why? OOH is hyperlocal, which allows campaigns to hyper-target voters and messaging. OOH is also highly complementary to ads running on other channels, making it an easy choice to continue engaging voters. And finally, the traditionally used inventory for political campaigns –TV– is going to be prohibitively expensive and scarce/sold out in some markets– especially battleground states or districts – making OOH the best bet for high impact, local A18+ reach. With OOH’s advancement in targeting and measurement, you’ll even be able to see the results. It’s a no lose proposition for political marketers.