Posterscope South Africa hosted their annual Out-of-Home (OOH) media conference at the Exclusive Books Social Kitchen and Bar in Johannesburg.
Koo Govender, CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network South Africa, welcomed attendees. Posterscope fits into the Dentsu Aegis Operating Model by providing a complete suite of media solutions throughout the market, including Out-of-Home planning, buying, and research with the aim to transform OOH with technology that will provide consumer-centric planning and ROI analytics on OOH properties across the country.
OOH trends in Africa
Head of Posterscope Donald Mokgale presented the OOH trends across sub-Saharan Africa that have been gaining traction. The rise of large formats, bigger sizes being demanded by clients for greater impact and measurement increasingly being demanded by clients to quantify ROI were just a few of the trends.
Baseline Innovation, 3D prints and illuminated dye cuts are increasingly becoming the norm. An example of Africa’s first frozen billboard in Mozambique was displayed by Mokgale.
‘Consumers are also starting to see more commuter focused inventory as well as spend by clients, a big opportunity for containers to be turned into vendor businesses to legitimise street vendors by selling from them,’ stated Mokgale.
Dar es Salaam rapid transit launch
The launch of Dar es Salaam rapid transit (DART) in Tanzania was explored as well as the opportunity for Wi-Fi solutions to drive more consumer engagement. Matatus in Kenya is already integrating Wi-Fi and entertainment by mixing music with radio generics, which form part of the package with digital logs.
Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) growth has proven effective, with Nigeria growing in quantity and size with up to 40% DOOH penetration. A big opportunity expressed by Mokgale was gas station LEDs, which are gaining enormous traction in countries such as Ghana. New and innovative screens at Kenya’s airport baggage claim used self-facing cameras that monitored viewing of the screens as well as how consumers engage on their mobile devices while waiting for their baggage. This enables measurement/tracking and is a huge opportunity to integrate mobile advertising to drive awareness and even interaction like services such as transport from the airport as an example.
Location intelligence
Mokgale touched on the importance of Location Intelligence and stressed how it is becoming increasingly important to businesses, i.e. understanding all the points of interest, retail spread as well as household income within the radii of sites influencing OOH placements significantly. Overlaying the above-mentioned datasets enabling a more critical and efficient view of business opportunities.
Livia Brown, the head of the Western Cape Posterscope team, presented the proprietary tools that Posterscope uses, to plan media and how integral data is in that mix.
Location data stack
Brown used an example from an alcohol brand to showcase some of the Posterscope tools as well as the importance of location intelligence. In it, she showed the planning process and what Posterscope calls a location data stack, where they overlaid social conversations about the category, then stacked on points of interest data i.e. where the product was available and then geofenced where the two data sets intersected and skewed OOH distribution as well as mobile placement, which led to very compelling results for the client.
Posterscope uses social listening data from relative social media sites. A “shot” category was created to identify hotspots and to create the desired target audience. They overlaid the venues that the client wanted them to focus on with social listening to identify key focus area. Traditional OOH billboards and Facebook Ads serve were then placed in the identified hotspot area for direct targeting and maximum ROI.
The major takeaway from the conference was that Posterscope is using their location data tools to show their data-driven approach to planning. Brown explained how Posterscope uses various layers of data to identify where they need to place campaign messaging to get the best out of clients’ marketing investment – reducing wastage.
The main point of the conference was to reposition Posterscope with their location data tools to show that their approach to planning is data-driven.
‘I really enjoyed the OOH presentation and it was super to hear more from an agency perspective, and equally importantly on how we as media owners need to innovate to move forward to remain relevant in a landscape that is tricky to navigate,’ said Tess Chance, Mood Media Network. ’It was great to see how OOH has become arguably one of the most innovative media platforms in recent years, integrating data with location, demographics and consumer mindsets and intent.’
The conversation has shifted, as OOH is now measurable through the OMC’s ROAD data, and this, coupled with location-based strategies, are providing marketers with powerful insights and compelling reason to include OOH in their media strategies.
‘Posterscope also overlays other tools such as Social media data, in order to capture the precise area that conversations are happening in, allowing OOH to be hyper-targeted and even more relevant than ever before,’ commented Darren McKinon, from JCDecaux Africa.
