Justify the Digital Display’s ROI with Programmatic Advertising

You know an LED display would transform your venue, spectacular, digital out-of-home advertisers, or digital billboard for the better: captivating audiences with fresh, cutting-edge visual experiences that command attention, drive engagement, and bolster the bottom line.

But a next-gen digital display doesn’t come cheap. So how do you justify the investment?

That’s where programmatic advertising comes in. With this emerging adtech, you can start generating ad revenue from lights on-without searching for leads, dealing with agencies, or negotiating multiple contracts. It’s automatic, and it’s changing the game for venues, spectaculars, and digital OOH across the board.

Programmatic advertising connects you directly to a marketplace of advertisers who are eager to pay top dollar for ad placement on your sign. The best part? It all happens automatically—no middlemen, no sales team, and no hassles. Just an easy way to drive ROI from the moment you switch your sign ‘on.’

In this guide, you’ll learn:

• The 101 basics of programmatic advertising
• The business case for why it’s valuable
• The nuts and bolts of how it works

Read on this article to learn more about how programmatic advertising enables you to drive ROI from the moment you power on your display.

Table of contents

Introduction
Part1: What is it?
Programmatic Advertising 101
An OOH Marketplace for the Digital Age
Part 2: Why is it better?
A simpler, Faster Path to DOOH ROI
Creating New Revenue Possibilities
Part 3: How does it work?
Empowering Owners, Removing Barriers, And Driving Value
A Simple Process For Owners
Helping Advertisers Hit The Mark
Closing

Introduction

Giving the fans what they want
Not that long ago, few would have imagined that watching something on a 4” screen might be more exciting than having a front-row seat to a world-class game or show. And yet, as streaming and mobile media become more interactive, they are beginning to eclipse live experiences in excitement, engagement, and pure addiction.

Recognizing this, many venues see the wisdom in making technology investments to meet consumer demand. Of course, for any business, it’s best to justify any capital investment with a hefty projection of ROI. What’s more, an ever-changing economic climate is driving the need for more diverse ad revenue. Yet even as venues face this challenge, a new form of digital advertising is coming into its own in the digital out-of-home space: programmatic advertising.

The potential of programmatic for DOOH has long been anticipated, but only now is the technology catching up with the promise—and it’s giving venues the fast, reliable ROI they’ve needed to justify upgrading their ad tech. This gives fans the dynamic, live-meets-digital experiences they crave.

In this short guide, we’ll take a closer look at how programmatic is enabling venues to up their live game, accelerate their time-to-profit, and deliver fans an experience that gets them off the couch—and back into the stands.

Part1: What is it?

Programmatic Advertising 101

Programmatic advertising is empowering digital sign owners like never before. Essentially, this new technology allows owners to sell a portion of their ad inventory on an online marketplace where buyers are looking for ad space. Qualified buyers then bid on the inventory, the highest bidder wins the space, and the ad gets displayed. All of this takes place automatically—with no extra technology required or complicated paperwork.

“Programmatic advertising is everything all in one, it’s plug and play. You turn it on and you start making money. You don’t have to hire a sales team or go search for leads.” – Daniel Sturdivant, Sales Lead for Samsung Signage/Spectaculars

An Out-Of-Home Marketplace for the Digital Age

A good analogy for programmatic advertising is AirBnB. Say you have a property to rent. You might post it to AirBnB’s online marketplace. Globally, guests in the market for a weekend getaway can then find your property and book online—without you having to lift a finger. Everybody wins.

Considering that DOOH is expected to be 40% of the total ad spend by 2025—that’s a $34B industry in just 4-5 years from now—it makes sense that venues ought to pay extra special attention to this fast-rising technology. “It’s a field of dreams scenario: If you build it, they will come,” says Russell Abdullah, Head of Strategy & Planning, Samsung Display. “Because you’re plugging into an engine that already has buyers waiting to buy. The bid logic is set. Activate and you’ve entered the marketplace.

Part 2: Why is it better?

A simpler, Faster Path to DOOH ROI

Complex, inefficient, expensive. Those are three words you might use to describe the old way of selling static digital ad space. Traditionally, a venue or sign owner would be dealing with a number of individual buyers and sellers. That meant individual negotiations, assets, contracts, and relationships—all of which needed to be independently managed, at great expense.

With programmatic advertising, it’s simple. There is one contract and one platform where sign owners and ad buyers can connect. By adopting this approach, sign owners can significantly reduce the headcount, operational complexity, and back-office needs that were required to serve the static buyer.

“Programmatically-enabled displays do what digital signage has always done—empower the owner,” says Ben Sewell, Samsung’s West US Sales Lead for Signage/Spectaculars. “It lets them control their revenue and how they want to use it. They can sell 100% of their display as ad space, or zero per cent—and enjoy total control over how they want to use their signage.”

Creating New Revenue Possibilities

Ultimately, programmatic advertising helps display owners see new possibilities for revenue generation—making it easy for them to execute. Many venues, retail stores, and other businesses that own digital displays are unaware of the revenue-generating potential of their boards—they are still bearing the mindset of static, and might not think of these assets as the advertising mediums they are.

Essentially, programmatic does for digital signage what eBay did for the garage sale. Now, instead of waiting in your driveway with your books, your clothing, and your kitchen appliances, you can inject these items directly into an exponentially larger marketplace of searching, qualified bidders. That’s more eyeballs driving higher bids, and an all-but-guaranteed sale.

Part 3: How does it work?

Empowering Owners, Removing Barriers, And Driving Value

With the right tools (an Internet-enabled digital display and programmatic software), reaping the benefit of programmatic is extremely simple. As we’ve said earlier, a programmatic exchange is a bidding marketplace—a network of computers that talk to each other, and that allows buyers and sellers to communicate.

An ad exchange automatically connects demand with supply. There is a variety of targeting criteria available: venue, location, size, indoor/outdoor, weather, time of day, foot traffic, and so on. This empowers marketers to reach the exact audience they want at the right time and the right place.

A Simple Process For Owners

For sign owners, the process is simple. Through an intuitive software program, they place their inventory on the marketplace where advertisers are already looking—along with their parameters. Venue owners have total control over who can advertise what, when, and for how long on their displays. If you’re Madison Square Garden, you don’t want to advertise ticketing for competing events—and you can specify that in your programmatic software.

This process enables sign owners to maximize—and unlock new value—from their displays with unprecedented ease and flexibility. For instance, a retailer might promote their own goods and events during store hours, but decide to sell ad space during off-hours—generating more revenue for the business.

Helping Advertisers Hit The Mark

Programmatic advertising brings great benefits to advertisers as well. “The bid logic helps you hit your target,” says Sewell. “An advertiser can say they want to reach these people, in this place, at this time—and the programmatic platform can assess measurement criteria and know there’s an estimated amount of people who match that profile that will see this ad.”

In addition to improved targeting, measurement technology has advanced as well. “Advances in measurement technology help quantify the impact of digital billboards,” says Sturdivant. “Cameras count people and gauge proximity. As a result, our ability to convey value and performance to advertisers has improved dramatically.”

When criteria meets inventory and a price agreed upon, the ad gets delivered. “Programmatic is helping make the dream vision of business become a reality,” says Abdullah. “Venues can invest in a best-in-class screen—not a bargain bin piece of technology—and still realize the full maximum potential of the screen–and defray the cost very quickly.”

“Programmatic [advertising] is helping make the dream vision of business become a reality.” – Russell Abdullah, Head of Strategy & Planning, Samsung Display

Closing

A disruptive idea whose time has come
Programmatic advertising is a game-changer— enabling sign and venue owners to finally justify upgrading their technology, knowing that fast, reliable ROI is waiting for them the instant the sign turns on. That said, not everybody will be happy about it. The advances in programmatic speak to the continued movement of the marketplace toward cutting out middlemen that aren’t providing enough value.

“I call it the Amazon effect,” says Sewell. “People are conditioned to now ask, ‘Why do I have to go to this other guy to get this service—can’t I just go directly to the people I want to work with?’ Death, taxes, and change are the three sure things in life. If you’re afraid about programmatic advertising, you need to rethink your value add.”

Source: Samsung