How OOH offers reach maximisation

Opinion

Finding a media channel that maximises reach might be the answer to surviving the recession.

There’s a rhythm to the current economic climate, like a river that ebbs and flows. Some category verticals are benefiting from an influx of new buyers, their banks fit to burst.

Others are temporarily blocked, the flow of demand dammed for now. And there are those that, at first, appear to be losing water, only to later see it topped up by an unlikely tributary of new market buyers.

This ebb and flow makes the essential job of priming with strong brand messages more challenging. Exactly who is it we should be talking to?

The simple solution is to cast the net as far and wide as you can. As backed up by effectiveness experts, Binet and Field: “for most brands, the best strategy is to hit as many people as possible.”

But what channel is best suited to such a strategy?

Well, thanks to the hard work of the out-of-home (OOH) research body Route Research and the launch of their latest post-pandemic audience figures, OOH would seem like a pretty good place to start.

According to these new figures, OOH now reaches a staggering 97% of the UK population every week, giving advertisers the opportunity to reach pretty much every potential market buyer in the UK on a weekly basis.

And Route is one of (it not the only) audience measurement system to offer visually adjusted views as standard, which means that the 97% reach figure isn’t just a potential opportunity to see, that’s guaranteed reach.

The new release also highlights the continued investment in digital out of home (DOOH). There are now over 14,000 digital screens logged in Route (a 15% increase on the previous release) offering a combined weekly UK reach of 83%.

That means there’s now an opportunity to scale-up digital executions, to deliver contextually relevant, flexible messaging to some 44 million potential buyers, every single week.

Accessing OOH reach of this scale is also becoming easier. For example, through one media owner, Clear Channel, you can access just under a third of those 14,000 digital screens and reach 80% of the 83% of UK adults that see DOOH every week.

Reaching diverse consumers

With guaranteed reach so readily available, the opportunity to tap into all potential UK buyers is a firm reality and the potential rewards are staggering.

Let’s take one example, minority ethnic groups. Frequently overlooked in today’s highly targeted media plans, these groups alone offer the potential for massive short- and long-term financial gain (the opportunity to ensure your virtual river remains topped up now and long into the future).

A recent WPP report, The Consumer Equality Equation, gives us a sense of just how valuable: “The value of changing the brand habits of just 1% of consumers from Minority Ethnic groups could be in the short term (to 2023) £2.34bn, in the medium term (a decade to 2031) £12.3bn and over a lifetime (to 2061) could be £107bn (CM)”.

The challenge is knowing how to reach these minority groups at scale. Building mass coverage through a multimedia campaign that reflects the media consumption of each individual minority ethnic group is no easy task.

Knitting together 101 different TV spots, radio channels, digital impressions and local press titles is an admirable, but impractical pursuit.

If only there was a single channel, a one-stop-shop that could tap straight into that £2.34bn of short-term cash — which of course there is.

Again, thanks to Route Research, we know that OOH reaches: 99% of UK Asian or Asian British, 99% of Black African, Caribbean, or Black British and 99% of Mixed or Multiple ethnic groups every week.

And, as discussed previously, you don’t need to stitch together multiple buying points to start to achieve this kind of reach. Clear Channel alone can provide 93%, 95% and 93% weekly cover respectively.

So, while there is no doubt of the uncertainty brands will face, and that it may, at times, look like the rivers will run dry, there will always be somewhere offering some sort of revenue stream — you just need to find it.

You can do that with a media plan that resembles a pair of water divining rods, trying to pick out each potential water source, one by one.

Or you can take the more efficient route, cover the country with OOH and see what springs a leak.

Lindsay Rapacchi is research & insight director at Clear Channel.