Why OOH media is central to SEA e-commerce

brands’ marketing plans

Mehul Mandalia and Quinn Amalore
Source: WARC Exclusive, November 2021
Downloaded from WARC

Moving Walls’ Mehul Mandalia and Quinn Amalore examine the effectiveness of Out-of-Home (OOH)
advertising in Southeast Asia’s e-commerce marketing.

OOH complements digital actions by engaging consumers online, with a combined omnichannel
approach working best.
OOH campaigns can be measured, with location intelligence to segment, target and reach
audiences at a granular level.
The largest players in online ads are among the top 15 OOH advertisers; tech-related firms are
25% of the biggest spenders.

Why it matters
Amid fierce competition in online advertising, e-commerce brands have discovered that OOH enables them to
build a sustained physical presence because it gives digital-only brands a real-life presence, so OOH’s
popularity among e-commerce brands can only continue to grow.

Takeaways
For consumers living in the digital world, OOH complements online activation as it amplifies/drives
online/search effects.
OOH provides an opportunity to cut through the digital saturation and reach relevant audiences in captive
environments.
OOH campaigns deliver higher brand recall and some formats of digital billboards outperform static for
creative recall.

E-commerce has become one of the most popular online activities worldwide. E-commerce is defined as the
buying and selling of goods and services over the internet, and data in the past five years shows that the retail
e-commerce market grew from US$1.5 trillion in 2015 to US$4.9 trillion in 2021. Countries with the biggest e-
commerce markets are China and the US, representing over 70% of global e-commerce sales.

Before e-commerce came about, commerce was dominated by brick-and-mortar outlets and every growing brand
tended to have at least some physical presence. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic meant fulfilling business
online was no longer a choice and just about every business had to develop their online commerce presence
almost overnight.

Out-of-Home (OOH) media has also been going through a similar transformation. OOH advertising reaches
consumers while they are outside their homes, typically using billboards, posters and other static displays.

While it will always remain in the physical world, it has been embracing digital characteristics. For example,
billboards can now be automatically bought and sold online. The media panels themselves are switching to
digital, which allows for animated content, or Digital Out of Home (DOOH) – advertising on digital panels or
screens that reaches consumers while they are outside their homes.

Another important development in OOH is that campaigns can now be measured. Through the use of location
intelligence, OOH can segment, target and reach audiences at a granular level. Platforms like “Moving
Audiences” have brought a wealth of data and insights to a medium that was once bought on local expertise
and relied on foot traffic count.

As e-commerce booms, so do the marketing campaigns. Many brands have found the sweet spot of
omnichannel advertising via the use of OOH in their marketing strategies.

Some of the largest players in online advertising – like Apple, HBO, Google, Amazon and Spotify – ranked
among the top 15 when it comes to money spent on OOH ads, while tech-related companies make up 25% of
the biggest spenders.

With the increasing concerns around personalised advertising and the fierce competition in online advertising,
e-commerce brands have found that OOH enables them to build a sustained physical presence without having
to serve deeply targeted communication.

How “outernet” media drives online actions

The rise of digital screens in multiple venues has created a new cohort of OOH media options beyond traditional
outdoor billboards. This physical digital screen canvas can be referred to as the outernet – the engagement
opportunity when audiences are not actively online on their devices.

E-commerce brands are now among the highest spenders on OOH media. Just like brick-and-mortar stores
used billboards and signage to drive footfall to a nearby location, e-commerce brands now use the same
physical media to drive digital footfall to their apps and websites.

Here are three key points that show OOH complements, or drives, digital actions:

1. OOH engages consumers online

Research from Nielsen provides insights that support the value of OOH in digital marketing. While OOH is
effective in driving various e-commerce activities, consumer actions taken on their smartphones after viewing an
OOH ad include:

42% have searched for the brand online

32% have visited the company’s website
33% have accessed a coupon or discount code
21% have downloaded or used an app in the ad
Almost 30% of people purchase after seeing an OOH ad
Top e-commerce companies use OOH for brand awareness (58%), sales activation (28%) and a
combination of both (24%)
Amazon uses the power of OOH ads to sell gadgets such as the Amazon Echo device
One study showed that 17% of consumers got in touch with a brand after seeing an OOH ad

2. OOH primes best while online activates

OOH has always excelled at reaching mass audiences in the physical world and has earned the title as the best
primer of all things digital. Its unique ability to cut through the clutter and retain audience attention makes it a
favourite medium for prime audiences. A Nielsen report states that OOH prompted more online activations than
radio and print. After seeing an OOH advertisement:

46% used a search engine to find more information

38% visited or posted on a Facebook page
23% posted a Twitter message
25% posted something on Instagram

Besides engagements on social media, Nielsen also states that 46% of those exposed to an OOH ad used an
internet search engine to look up for information after seeing or hearing an OOH ad in the past six months.

The same applies to mobile. A research study by Neuro-Insight deduces that participants exposed to a DOOH
advertisement first responded strongly to mobile, with 36% higher levels of memory encoding.

3. A combined omnichannel approach works better

Based on Hootsuite’s 2019 Global Digital Yearbook, 66% of people around the world are unique mobile users,
while 58% are internet users.

This shows that consumers are always attached to the digital world, whether they are at home or on the go. This
makes OOH a perfect complement to online activation as it amplifies and drives online and search effects.

Even with the rise of e-commerce, more consumers still prefer to shop in the real world. A Thrive Analytics report
highlights that “60% of consumers use mobile devices to find information on local products and services, and
40% of those are on-the-go when searching for it”.

Although online shopping might be convenient and practical in today’s day and age, it does not engage
consumers on an emotional level the same way conventional shopping does. Consumers still value a real-life
experience that can offer more immersive and emotionally engaging brand interactions.

How e-commerce brands are using OOH in SEA

Two OOH campaigns run by e-commerce brands have leveraged this traditional media channel.

Foodpanda’s dynamic weather-trigger campaign with real-time data (July 2020)

Foodpanda, a global food and grocery delivery platform, is a big believer in the power of having a physical
presence using OOH media. It is not uncommon to see entire cities painted pink by Foodpanda creatives across
static and digital billboards.

Far from just dominating OOH media though, the brand also looks at using innovations that help them deliver
unique campaigns.

In the Philippines, Foodpanda regularly runs dynamic OOH campaigns that leverage live signals from weather
and traffic data sources.

The brand worked with Moving Walls to enable this. Based on various traffic and weather signals, the CMS was
prompted to showcase the most relevant menu items immediately.

For example, if it’s a sunny day, the data platform picks up the warm weather signal, and the nation’s favourite
“HaloHalo” ice cream creatives pop up. When it rains, the trigger prompts comfort food items, entitled “sinigang
weather is calling”. When the pre-morning rush kicks in, a coffee ad, for instance, prompts consumers to open
the app and order a coffee drink.
The post-campaign reports show that Foodpanda’s brand metrics were positively impacted, specifically saliency.
By serving a highly personalised ad campaign, Foodpanda managed to maximise the total audience reach whilst
enhancing a great offline experience.

Changing creatives is a key benefit of using DOOH media but the cost of developing multiple versions of a
creative may hinder such executions.

A QMS neuroscience study (Australia 2021) highlighted the greater impact of DOOH campaigns with changing
creatives. The report stated that evolving creatives were shown to deliver a 38% higher impact than that of static
creative by day five.
Lalamove leverages dynamic audience data to deliver improved OOH reach (Dec 2020)

Lalamove is another fast-growing digital brand which has made OOH media a mainstay of its marketing
campaigns. The brand recently raised an eye-watering US$515 million in Series E funding.

At the height of the pandemic, when various lockdowns were in place, Lalamove turned to access the latest
audience movement trends to improve its brand presence in key customer delivery locations in Malaysia.

Rather than switching off, Lalamove doubled down on new OOH opportunities. They worked with technology
providers like Moving Walls to identify better-performing locations that reached specific audience segments,
including home-movers and potential delivery drivers.

The campaign included a mix of static and digital billboards, all executed from within the same platform to save
time and enable Lalamove to match its location coverage against signals it was seeing from its own app usage
data.

Since the campaign included both static and digital OOH, the brand also ran a post-campaign study to
understand the overall impact of the OOH media locations it selected and whether one format type outperformed
the other.

By using a forced exposure test that targeted audiences exposed to the campaign and then comparing this to
results from a similar test done to a control group, Lalamove learned that the OOH campaign delivered
significantly higher brand recall and particular formats of the digital billboards outperformed static billboards in
terms of creative recall.

Case study: How a global e-commerce brand used OOH to drive brand
recognition and consideration (June 2021)
As several e-commerce brands hold sales events almost every month, the competition for digital attention is
extremely high with ads across premium websites, video platforms and social media.

OOH provides an opportunity to cut through the digital saturation and reach relevant audiences in captive
environments. However, traditional OOH solutions are not able to optimise budgets to target a specific segment.

This global e-commerce leader worked with Moving Walls to execute a campaign targeted against a specific
audience – a younger age group and with an affinity for online shopping. The campaign ran in Singapore earlier
this year.

The campaign reached 699,000 unique audiences, with over one million potential views. The overall campaign
lasted for 28 days and an average person had a minimum opportunity to see the ads almost two times (average
frequency of 1.57). The campaign successfully delivered reach amongst the most relevant audiences for e-
commerce, including 61.3% against young adults.
The brand also ran a brand research study, which clearly showed a higher brand recall among those who visited
the locations with the ads. The consideration scores (for next purchase) were also higher among those who
visited the ad locations and even more so among those who associated the OOH advertising correctly with the
brand.

As restrictions continue to ease in many markets, people are spending more time outside their homes. OOH
media has been transformed by digital panels, which allow it to seamlessly fit into various environments.

Because they are physical in nature, they straightaway give a digital-only brand a real-life presence. OOH’s
popularity among e-commerce brands will continue to rise and new capabilities like audience-targeting and the
ability to run programmatic campaigns will help them make the most of their campaigns.

About the authors

Mehul Mandalia
Co-founder and head of demand, Moving Walls

Mehul enables global brands and media agencies to optimise their out-of-home media spends using online
planning and buying tools powered by location intelligence. He has spent close to a decade building
partnerships with third party advertising platforms and industry associations to grow the adoption of new
technologies.

Quinn Amalore
Senior marketing executive, Moving Walls

Quinn is responsible for corporate communications, driving awareness, lead generation and industry recognition
for Moving Walls through innovative marketing initiatives, offline and online campaigns, lead-generating events,
and multi-channel acquisition strategies.
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