How out-of-home advertising increases website
and dealership traffic
and dealership traffic
Intelligent DOOH advertising — Toyota / March 2020
Toyota has enjoyed a 30% increase in dealership visits after using smart advertising on digital billboards
Car manufacturers often turn to out-of-home advertising, which offers an easy way to interact with the target audience — motorists. However, despite the obvious benefits of billboards, it is difficult for advertisers to assess how many passing drivers are seriously interested in their product. Toyota sought to identify the factors that impact the effectiveness of DOOH and determine whether out-of-home advertising can improve several business indicators: dealership visits, dial-ins and website clicks.
Synaps Labs, Russ Outdoor and MTS offered the solution. Their smart technology offers target advertising on city roads in real time with car brand recognition and subsequent analysis. This approach responded to Toyota’s key objective — building targeted coverage with the possibility to measure further audience behavior. Toyota and its media partner, dentsu X, selected the most effective target segments upon analyzing the potential customer groups and identifying the cars whose owners often switch to Toyota. The following parameters to identify the target audience were selected: the old car’s make, year, number of owners and taxi exclusion.
Dentsu X and Toyota conducted two advertising campaigns. In the first campaign, the automaker projected special offers on five Toyota models. In the second, it announced the release of a special edition of Toyota Camry.
Synaps Labs, Russ Outdoor and MTS offered the solution. Their smart technology offers target advertising on city roads in real time with car brand recognition and subsequent analysis. This approach responded to Toyota’s key objective — building targeted coverage with the possibility to measure further audience behavior. Toyota and its media partner, dentsu X, selected the most effective target segments upon analyzing the potential customer groups and identifying the cars whose owners often switch to Toyota. The following parameters to identify the target audience were selected: the old car’s make, year, number of owners and taxi exclusion.
Dentsu X and Toyota conducted two advertising campaigns. In the first campaign, the automaker projected special offers on five Toyota models. In the second, it announced the release of a special edition of Toyota Camry.
What is the secret of smart out-of-home advertising?
The Synaps Labs system operates through artificial intelligence, which powers its video cameras on the roads of Moscow. AI analyzes vehicle traffic, identifies car models and determines whether they fit the parameters of the target audience. If so, the technology launches the client’s advertisement on the digital billboards provided by Russ Outdoor, the largest out-of-home advertising operator.
For further analysis, Synaps Labs’ AI technology assigns a unique personal identifier to the license plate, allowing the system to profile a user without collecting and processing personal data. The car’s make and a set of random numbers forming a unique ID are all that is needed to optimize an advertising campaign
The partnership with the mobile operator MTS helped assess the impact of out-of-home advertising on audience behavior. Synaps Labs shared encrypted car IDs with MTS to match the IDs with its users’ telephone numbers using geolocation and without disclosing any personal information. As a result, MTS counted the number of potential customers who visited the website, dialed in and visited a dealership after being exposed to a DOOH advertisement.
For further analysis, Synaps Labs’ AI technology assigns a unique personal identifier to the license plate, allowing the system to profile a user without collecting and processing personal data. The car’s make and a set of random numbers forming a unique ID are all that is needed to optimize an advertising campaign
The partnership with the mobile operator MTS helped assess the impact of out-of-home advertising on audience behavior. Synaps Labs shared encrypted car IDs with MTS to match the IDs with its users’ telephone numbers using geolocation and without disclosing any personal information. As a result, MTS counted the number of potential customers who visited the website, dialed in and visited a dealership after being exposed to a DOOH advertisement.
How were Toyota's advertising campaigns carried out?
Synaps Labs divided drivers into target and non-target audiences prior to the campaign. The target audience was comprised of the owners of competing auto brands in the same price range and all the other drivers were considered non-target audience. The characteristics of the target audience were then entered into the system that sought out the target cars on the road, counted them and, when their tally surged, displayed the advertisement on digital billboards.
Targeted advertising for Toyota was displayed on digital screens from Russ Outdoor for two months. In the end, Synaps Labs compiled the statistics on the drivers who were exposed to the offer and those who were not exposed. This was done to segment the audience and use aggregated data to calculate the conversion rate through integration with MTS. As a result, four segments were formed. Two segments comprised the target audience, where one was exposed to advertisement and the other was not. And two more made up the non-target audience, with one segment listing drivers who watched the advertisement, and the other did not.
Targeted advertising for Toyota was displayed on digital screens from Russ Outdoor for two months. In the end, Synaps Labs compiled the statistics on the drivers who were exposed to the offer and those who were not exposed. This was done to segment the audience and use aggregated data to calculate the conversion rate through integration with MTS. As a result, four segments were formed. Two segments comprised the target audience, where one was exposed to advertisement and the other was not. And two more made up the non-target audience, with one segment listing drivers who watched the advertisement, and the other did not.
Results showed that out-of-home advertising
increases conversion rates
increases conversion rates
Then, Synaps Labs analyzed the effect of out-of-home advertising on the target audience. It turned out that conversions had increased. Targeted advertising in the tactical campaign boosted the number of calls to the centers by 34% and website traffic by 15%. Most importantly, the number of visits to dealerships increased by 30%. The image campaign promoting the new Toyota Camry increased the number of calls by 26% and the number of visits by 15%, while the conversion rate of website traffic had not changed.
The audience analysis showed that a tactical promo was more successful than image advertising. The success could be attributed to the special offer presented on the billboards in the first campaign. Consumers are more likely to buy a new car when it is offered at a good discount.
Smart out-of-home advertising
takes on digital features and delivers results
takes on digital features and delivers results
The advertising market has changed in recent years — the internet has seen a surge in user numbers, even outstripping TV. One factor spurring the growth of digital marketing is the transparency of data related to the impact of media on significant business indicators. Everything is clear on the Web: UTM tags allow you to calculate traffic and profile a consumer. Hence, promoters have preferred the internet over out-of-home advertising, where profiling the audience has been difficult, same as estimating and measuring the effectiveness of a creative.
By joining forces, Synaps Labs, MTS and Russ Outdoor have shown that out-of-home advertising can become a powerful modern tool for attracting customers – supported by audience behavior analysis, targeting and increasing conversions. Now, OOH advertising is powered by digital elements that are essential today, which is good news for marketers and advertising agencies: based on real numbers, it has become easier to arrange for the budget and to increase the effectiveness of placements.
By joining forces, Synaps Labs, MTS and Russ Outdoor have shown that out-of-home advertising can become a powerful modern tool for attracting customers – supported by audience behavior analysis, targeting and increasing conversions. Now, OOH advertising is powered by digital elements that are essential today, which is good news for marketers and advertising agencies: based on real numbers, it has become easier to arrange for the budget and to increase the effectiveness of placements.
"Synaps Labs provided a real opportunity to digitize and analyze the effectiveness of out-of-home advertising placement. In this case, we used OOH for tactical promotion for the first time, and the obtained results confirmed its value."
Eva Chikirneeva, Toyota
Eva Chikirneeva, Toyota
"The MTS Big Data team has been working for many years on the practical application of big data in related industries. We were delighted to team up with Synaps Labs and Russ Outdoor to promote out-of-home advertising development. Together with our partners, we managed to analyze the audience's behavior and measure the actual interest to the advertised offer without using the drivers' personal data."
Sergey Denisov, MTS
Sergey Denisov, MTS
"Toyota has always placed high demands in assessing the performance of various media outlets. For many years, we have been jointly searching for and testing various out-of-home advertising assessment methodologies and now, thanks to our partners from Synaps Labs, MTS and Russ Outdoor, we have the opportunity to report as transparently as possible on the contribution of the OOH to the overall business results. The demand for such transparency in assessing the media’s effectiveness has been present for a long time and now, in the post-COVID period, it will be even higher. The past six months have given a significant boost to the digitization of business and the media itself, so I am sure that, in the future, we will see a lot of interesting technological solutions in increasing the transparency in the operations of the offline media previously known as ‘classic’."
Andrey Yakovitsky, dentsu X
Andrey Yakovitsky, dentsu X
"How do you prove the effectiveness of a media channel if the advertised brand is familiar to everyone, its advertising campaign simultaneously uses several channels and the competition for consumer attention is constantly growing? Out-of-home advertising is often used as a tool for building knowledge and forming the ‘top of the funnel’, but we are convinced that we can also help solve both tactical and activation tasks aimed at changing not only the attitude toward the brand, but also the behavior of the buyer. The technologies with which Russ Outdoor, along with Synaps Labs and MTS, conducted Toyota’s promotional campaign allowed us to confirm this once again.”
Sergey Naumov, Russ Outdoor
Sergey Naumov, Russ Outdoor
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