“Ripping off the band-aid doesn’t have to hurt, it’s simply the first step toward a smarter, more transparent, more accountable, and ultimately more effective future for DOOH.”

OPINION

Bram Stevens

Co-founder youdooh

STOP the POPs

Don’t get me wrong, I love out of home advertising. I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve stood on the side of the road, waiting for an ad to show up. There is something magical about seeing your creation, lighting up on a screen in real life, the wind in your hair or the sun on your face, surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the city. A meta or google ad doesn’t come close.

The Times They Are a Changin’

Out of Home is a wonderful advertising medium, as old as the industry itself. It’s also one that’s been through huge digital transformation over these past 5 years.

POPs or Proof of Postings, are a remnant of the pre-digital era, when ads were on printed onto physical posters. Once booked by the advertiser, the installer would drive to the billboard, paste up the poster, take a photo and then share with the advertiser as proof that the ad was real.

You would think that, now a large proportion of outdoor advertising is digital, this practice might have moved with the times. Not so. Every day of every week, dozens of photographers still drive around the country, spending countless hours waiting on the side of the road for ads to show up and then trying to capture that magic on a photo. Carbon footprint, logistical challenges and parking infringements aside, this is an expensive and resource intensive exercise that in my opinion has passed its expiry date. Moreover, with media owners retiring ad slots in the loop and using mediation to manage yield, the play out frequency and location will be less predictable, making it even harder to spot ads in the wild.

POPs in a biddable and addressable digital media world should no longer be a thing. In a platform world, every time an ad is played, a corresponding digital imprint of the play is made. This is nearly always processed in real-time, providing the opportunity to share playout data of where and when your ads are playing in full transparency.

So why are advertisers still asking media owners for POPs?

Well first of all, not everybody is. It’s mainly advertisers and agencies that have had previous experience of buying DOOH directly. There is still a lack of direct insight and visibility into campaign delivery in direct IO buys, which would help to explain why PoPs still exist. We’ve made some good progress with cameras pointed onto screens in recent years, but If we really want to make DOOH a more measurable channel, let’s start with offering all advertisers reliable live delivery reporting, rather confirmation that it ran at least once for the photo opp.

The Future of PoPs

At youdooh, we offer all advertisers the ability to automatically preview their ads in situ on the screens they have selected. In most case this does not only eliminate the need POPs, it also gives them a way to check whether the creative works well in the environment and adapt if needed before finalising the booking. This gives them the confidence and validation upfront that it will show as intended, which often the key reason for asking for a POP in the first place.

Occasionally we still get people asking for them. In that case we point them to our real-time dashboards or encourage them to go out there and see their ad in real life, using youdooh's unique 'push-to-play' feature, which fast tracks delivery of your ads while you are standing in front of the screen, lovingly also nicknamed 'selfie mode'. More and more media owners have decided to not provide POPs anymore for programmatic buys, a step in the right direction. Let's face it, in 5 years’ time, when a large portion of DOOH spend will be fully biddable and platform based, it’s hard to see how they will still be around.

So let's save ourselves a painful transition and STOP the POP now.