Theme 03
OUT-OF-HOME
Since the intent of this project is to apply Synthetic Media within outdoor settings, the following paragraphs contain an analysis of OOH's current scenario to better identify the possible directions to take. We particularly take Digital OOH Advertising into consideration, which refers to "digital forms of media and advertising that appear in places that are accessible to the public, like shopping malls or beside major roadways. (...) including billboards, transit ads, street furniture, and wallscapes" (Gadek, 2020, n.p.). Together with DOOH, we also encompass the spaces surrounding us when we are out of our homes.
Outdoor Advertising is a traditional medium, which is best known for “its broad reach, great visual impact and the capacity to incorporate local context into creative” (JCDecaux, 2020, n.p.). Nowadays, OOH is not going through its best time, as it's still recovering from the effects of the pandemic. Amid the crisis, the Outdoor Advertising market saw its worldwide revenues falling by 27.4% (PWC, 2021, n.p.) given that the worldwide population spent longer time indoors than usual.
Despite such turbulences, there seems to be a brighter future in the industry: for 2021, WARC Data forecasted global OOH advertising spend to rise 17.4%, and it is also expecting a further increase of 11.2% in 2022 (Clapp, 2021, n.p.).
​
However, this doesn't mean it's a victory for OOH yet.
What can be done to help OOH emerge again? What must change in the industry?
​
​
​
Information Overload
To start the discussion, we will use the following video as an example. Eyes on:
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
It doesn't, indeed. According to research by Credos, a UK think-tank, repetition explicitly links to ad avoidance and ad blocking activities (Admap, 2019, p. 6). If little frequency makes the campaign less impactful, on the other hand, an excessive frequency annoys audiences, and advertisers risk wasting their resources.
This also connects with the so-called Attention Economy, which recognises consumer attention as a scarce but valuable resource. As a matter of fact, humans possess a limited information-processing capacity, so "to deal with a large volume of advertisements shown, people engage in 'selective perception', which involves screening out advertisements that are less relevant to them” (Taylor, et al., 2006, p. 22).
The characteristics of human attention also fall within the expressions inattentional blindness and change blindness. Faris Yakob describes inattentional blindness as the moment when “you fail to notice something that is fully visible because your attention has been directed elsewhere” (Yakob, 2015, p. 9). The author also adds “it is here that concerns may lie about whether someone watching the advertisements on television is really seeing them” (Yakob, 2015, p. 9).
The expression change blindness refers to situations “where you do not notice a change in scene when your attention is taken from it for an instant” (Yakob, 2015, pp. 9-10). Yakob also argues that “one of the overwhelming features of our perception, and counter-intuitive to our experience of it, is how limited it actually is. We don’t actually see a lot of what we are looking at, but the brain fills in these gaps all the time, both in what we see and what we remember, in what is known as fabulation” (Yakob, 2015, p. 10).
​
​
​
Irrelevancy & Personalisation
​
Furthermore, in its ability to reach large groups of consumers, OOH often goes too general, appearing irrelevant from time to time. Under this line of thought, Emarsys, a global AI marketing platform, found that 60% of the 2,000 UK consumers participating in the study, wanted offers to be tailored precisely to them and their interests (WARC, 2018, n.p.).
Even though personalisation increases the relevancy of adverts, unlike many marketers tend to believe, it's not always the ultimate solution. Personalisation also stands for loss of privacy: "there’s a price to pay if it seems like a brand is invading privacy. Brands need to develop a balanced data strategy to avoid that perception, while still making the most of consumers’ desire to be known and recognized for who they are. The key to using any of this data is to use it responsibly and humanely" (Accenture Interactive, 2019, p. 12).
In addition to this, in their report, Karina Vold and Jess Whittlestone argue the distinction between ethical and unethical forms of targeting. The authors particularly outlined five relevant factors for ethical personalised targeting, to better protect people's autonomy. These are: "(1) to what extent the objectives of the targeting effort align with the individual’s own values and interests, (2) how transparent the targeting effort is, (3) whether the individual has given consent for their data to be collected and used for the purposes of targeting, (4) whether the form of targeting makes a fair attempt not to restrict information or choices in a way that misrepresents reality, and, finally, (5) whether certain sensitive, vulnerable information about an individual has been used" (Vold, et al., 2019, p.13).