Not all outdoor advertising works in the same manner. A billboard on a highway can serve a completely different purpose than a panel inside a mall or a wrap on a city bus. The format you choose can help you make sure who sees your message, where it is seen and how often it is visible.
Understanding outdoor advertising formats is one of the first steps to building a campaign that actually works and delivers results. Here is a breakdown of the main formats that are available.
Outdoor Advertising Formats
Here are the main types or main outdoor formats of ooh:
1. Billboard Advertising
The billboard is the absolute backdoor of OOH advertising on its global scale.
Billboard advertising works because of its large scale and visibility. A well-placed board on a highway or an arterial road can reach thousands of people every day, be it commuters, travelers, or locals. The message lands into their heads in seconds, which is exactly what this format is designed for.
It demands a bold and eye-catching creative with a strong visual. Static billboards are cost-effective and consistent. When paired with digital screens or digital billboards that have rotating creatives, are updated remotely and offer real-time flexibility – adds to its advantage.
This is better for product launches and time sensitive promotion campaigns
2. Street Furniture Advertising
Street furniture formats bring the brand down to eye level quite literally. Street furniture formats include bus shelter panels, bench panels as well as kiosk displays and even urban poster sites.
This sits right in the pedestrian zones or on busy pavements and even on transit nodes across the urban areas.
The key advantage with this type of format is the dwell time. A commuter waiting at a bus centre is not rushing past your advertisement. They are standing right in front of one, daily. That’s rare in outdoor advertising.
These street furniture advertising works particularly well for:
- Local as well as hyperlocal brand campaigns, retail and promotional messages,
- Brands that are associated with app, food delivery or FMCG targeting urban areas
- Campaigns that need daily exposure along daily commute routes
3. Transit Advertising
Transit advertising puts your brand on the move because it reaches the people who are already in transit. Transit outdoor advertising formats tend to include full bus wraps, metro train panels as well as auto rickshaw branding, railway station displays and airport corridors.
The commuter is the prime audience here – someone mid-journey goes to a familiar route they travel everyday. Transit formats used along commuter routes are specifically excellent for:
- Brand awareness campaigns that actually need wide geographical spread to reach audiences,
- Product launches that tend to target urban as well as semi-urban audiences, and
- A brand or advertiser that wants repeated exposure across the entire city corridors.
4. Digital OOH
Digital OOH is the fastest growing segment in the format mix and that also for good reason. Digital screens allow brands to have the ability to update content in real time, rotate multiple messages across the same screen as well as respond to context – for example, time of the day, weather or live events.
A static OOH format can give you one message whereas DOOH places in high-traffic urban areas give you a living breathing advertisement. Digital OOH advertisement is particularly helpful for:
- Product launches where brand messaging needs to build urgency
- Seasonal promotions that require very quick creative changes,
- High-impact placements in urban areas, malls, etc.
- And lastly, brands that want to maximize reach without committing to a single static creative.
The cost is higher than static formats. However, you get high impact campaigns that bring you great ROI.
How to Choose the Right OOH Format
Forms of outdoor advertising don’t need to be chosen in isolation. The strongest campaigns combine formats strategically.
- Make sure to match your format to the right audience. Fast moving highway audiences tend to need simple bold creative.
- Try to use billboards for mass, street furniture advertising for frequency and transit advertising for wide geographic spread.
- Layer digital ads on top of static advertisement for flexibility, consistent exposure and impact in high-footfall areas. This will help you get maximum brand presence and recognition over time.
- Use airport and mall ad formats or placements as they work best for premium positioning and targeted demographics.
- Use roadside and bus stops ads or street furniture and transit ads together in order to create repeated exposure along daily commutes.
The goal is to reach people at multiple points in their day in order to reinforce the same message across different advertising formats without relying on a single touchpoint. This makes media planning essential in the early stages.
Conclusion
When making the choice between the right outdoor advertising formats, you must keep in mind that it is not about the budget, it is about the understanding of your audience’s movement and reaching them where they are.
Billboard, transit, street furniture, digital OOH, mall, airport – each have a distinct role. The best OOH advertisements do not just pick one. They tend to build a complete presence across the right mix of formats in order to maximize reach, drive brand awareness as well as maintain the brand visible throughout the consumer’s entire day.
At Selvel One, we’ve been planning & executing outdoor advertising for years & years. From large format billboard networks to digital screens in high traffic city corridors, we can do it all. Contact us today in order to start planning your next campaign.
Frequently Asked Questions
What type of outdoor advertising format offers maximum reach?
It can be said that billboard and transit advertising typically tends to deliver the highest combined reach, which is especially true for metro cities that have dense commuter populations.
Is digital OOH really better than static billboard advertising?
It is important to note that they both serve different purposes. Static ads tend to offer affordable, long-term visibility whereas digital OOH provides flexibility and real-time creative updates that are perfect for short campaigns as well as promotions.
How can you choose the right OOH format for your brand?
You must make sure to match the format to your audience’s movement patterns as well as campaign objectives.