Outdoor Digital Signage – more effective than TV

A recent study has highlighted the effectiveness of outdoor advertising at developing brand awareness and driving more customers to search for brands online.

The research, conducted by the British Outdoor Advertising Association (OAA); research company, Millward Brown; and brand company, Mindshare, analysed advertising over five years.

The study looked at 326 brands from 25 different categories, most of which found better brand awareness developing following outdoor advertisements, compared to TV.

This is quite important for the outdoor digital signage market, which, while a growing industry, its growth could be said to be stifled by the difficulty in demonstrating the return on investment and digital outdoor signage campaign will provide.

And outdoor digital signage can involve heady set-up costs. High brightness screens, waterproof LCD enclosures, installation costs, networking and content creation can all lead to project require a substantial investment.

Until now, a return on this investment was only speculative. Many claims have been made to the effectiveness of outdoor digital signage, and while these speculations were logical there was little evidence to back-up the claims.

Now, however, there is some solid evidence that outdoor advertising not only works but for brand awareness is a better medium that TV advertising. But why is branding so effective in outdoor advertising?

The answer must be found in the way an outdoor advertisement — and outdoor digital signage is just a modern approach to traditional outdoor advertising — is viewed.

Unlike TV commercials where the viewer will sit and watch 30 seconds of information, there is not the time or inclination for such viewing outdoors. At best, most outdoor digital signage screens are looked upon for three to eight seconds, so there is very little time to absorb information.

Simple outdoor digital signage content, showing just brand names, or icons, are easy to absorb and as outdoor digital stands out more than conventional advertising, these brand images are extremely noticeable.

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