Written by: Alma Escudero and David Leo
As the U.S approaches nearly 300 million smartphone users in 2022 there is plenty of opportunity to expose your brand to a multitude of potential customers, but how can you assure that your message will make it through to them? Combining the large platform that comes with smartphones with the up-and-coming advertising platform in mobile billboard trucks, this could create a potential partnership that could pay massive dividends.
So how effective are Mobile Billboard Trucks? In America (according to the Trucking Association), Mobile Billboard Trucks are noticed by 98% of people traveling in cars, while the American Trucking Association also reported that 91% of the targeted audience notice a truck advertisement, and a large percentage recall the specific advertisement. It is also estimated that each truck can generate about 30,000-70,000 impressions each day!
The Transport Advertising Council reports 97% recall rates with mobile billboards and Product Acceptance and Research Inc reports 80% recall rates for specific ads. According to the Nielsen OOH Advertising Study (2019), mobile billboards have very high recall rates amongst specific segments such as Hispanic, Asian and black, audience demographic ranging 16-49.
With the high recall rates from Mobile Billboard trucks, they need a way to access the product in a timely fashion and that is where pairing with smartphones will come into play.
Greater Reach using Geo-Targeting Tactics
Rather than keeping your brand’s message stationary where it could potentially get lost in all the traffic of the hustle of a populous city, where only a potential segment of your preferred audience might catch a glimpse of your advertisement. Instead, by using a mobile billboard your brand will be seen by a substantial portion of your intended audience with a fleet of trucks driving up and down the route of your choosing.
Instead of being confined to a single wall or location, the entire city can be your canvas. Mobile billboards can go everywhere, increasing your chances of being seen by motorists, pedestrians, cyclists, and everything in between, all over town.
Combining the benefits of a moving billboard and relatively novel GPS technology by optimizing route selection, mobile billboards can be driven just about anywhere — even in high-traffic areas where you typically wouldn’t find any other billboard advertising opportunities. Because most trucks already have onboard GPS or Bluetooth technology, you can view where your truck is on the road at any moment in time and choose truck routes that match your targeted areas. What’s more? You can leverage data on who your campaign reached — down to their demographic and location — and re-target your audience on their mobile devices.
Mobile billboards have the ability to infiltrate a specific market on a hyper-local level through planning specific routes by the means of intelligent mapping software and GPS signals. They can also target based on consumer interests. In saying that, mobile billboards can arrive outside of sports games highly targeting fans leaving the stadium. This form of audience segmentation makes for the best impressions. Adding to this, audiences can be captured through their smartphones in the vicinity of a mobile billboard. Targeted ads from the advertised company can hit their mobile devices through GPS enabling and WiFi making sure the message lasts longer.
This marketing tactic is known as Geofencing as it allows marketers to define specific spatial boundaries within which their ads will be deployed. This allows them to target nearby people who are more likely to shop at a particular business because of proximity, demographics, brand affinity, and other attributes. This is far more effective and cost-efficient than relying on wide-ranging, highly-random, and expensive mass advertising.
Geofencing marketing tactics can be very beneficial with mobile billboard trucks as they are timely, targeted ads which means that it will find the exact audience you would be looking for in an instantaneous manner. Geofencing marketing is also economically friendly as it takes up a lot less resources as compared to other forms of mass advertising mediums, but they are highly flexible and can suit almost any companies needs.
As mentioned before from The Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA), mobile billboard trucks can generate anywhere between 30,000 to 70,000 impressions in just one day! Imagine if your company puts their mobile trucks out for 2 or even 3 months, the possibilities are endless. When a Movia mobile billboard goes by them, whether they are in a car or on the sidewalk, their proprietary beacon technology picks up that signal and counts it as an impression. On average, you can expect 1.5 – 2.5 million eye-level views on your moving billboard every month.
How to translate impressions to clicks
We been talking about impressions, but what really is that? Impressions shows who your ad is targeting and is usually presented as a weekly number. Impressions measure the average number of times an ad is viewed by a consumer. Impressions include traffic information to help estimate the number of vehicles advertised.Impressions can also include tourist surveys, data modeling, and census data.
And how we do calculated them? Previously, OOH ad impressions were measured using effective daily hits and traffic to estimate the total number of different consumers in a target group exposed to ads for a product or service, called reach.
Effective Daily Traffic (DEC) is a measure of the traffic generated by a particular ad. Although, advertisers were not able to determine how many people were actually viewing their ads using this information as it only measured the number that might be seeing them It was Geopath, a non-profit organization formerly known as Traffic Audit Bureau (TAB), that recognized the issue facing advertisers whose ads could not be reliably tracked.
In their experiments, drivers wore goggles that tracked their eye movements while driving to develop a new way to calculate impressions. By examining this data, they could determine what is the amount of drivers who actually viewed a particular advertisement.
In today’s world, that number is known as the variable adjustment index. Reach and impressions for outdoor advertising are calculated by the VAI.
The majority of companies that use outdoor advertising rely on Geopath to gather data on all of their outdoor impressions and other measurements today. On the other hand, due to Geopath’s mission, America’s OOH advertising ratings are audited and reported independently.
Ad agencies, media companies, and advertisers are all represented on the board, so advertisers and agencies know they are getting accurate information.
Thus, a thing that will help you maximize your OOH is keeping in consideration your market funnel, since you already had your mobile billboard on the streets you are already facing one of the stages of “awareness” to keep on board with your target do not forget about the other stages “interest, desire, action”.
Your audience may now be completely aware of your brand or product. They want to know more. Take advantage of this opportunity to catch their attention with your brand.
A dollar spent on out-of-home drives more online engagement than any other media format. According to Nielsen research, 66% of smartphone users took some type of online action after viewing an OOH advertisement. Among these actions was searching the Internet for more information or using social media. So, grow more settgin your truck campaign with your online ads on same location and follows a prescribed route. A mobile billboard will reach the right people at the right place if you’re targeting a specific audience.
For example,
SPCA Ad Campaign
When the Ontario SPCA and Humane Society charity wanted to create a unique OOH advertisement that would spread their cause to a wide audience, they partnered with Bulldog Mobile Billboards to launch a truck-side ad campaign. The truck-side ads were digital so, instead of a static poster it showed the Humane Society’s latest video of different animals interacting with people. Their company’s information (link to a web page), “Free fix for your pets”, and their phone number were also included to promote spaying/neutering pets to prevent overpopulation and stray animals. With this ad campaign, cute animals were shown in motion to illustrate the company’s cause, which is something that could not have been achieved with ordinary static billboards.
Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation
Movia had a partnership with the Ontario’s Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) to promote their lottery, casinos, slot machines, and gaming centers. As we all know, OLG has been around 47 years and has contributed over $50 billion to charity throughout the years while promoting fair and responsible gambling for the province of Ontario. In their three-week campaign, they targeted young adults between the ages of 20 and 30 in the suburbs of Toronto using 12 trucks.
By combining Movia’s patented beacon technology and Geopath, they were able to gather interesting campaign data, which showed that they reached over 17.5 million impressions and that 61% of them fell within the main target demographic and geographical region. In this case, OLG was able to maximize their return on investment by using a mobile out-of-home advertisement (truck-side advertising) combined with modern technology since they not only increased their sales with this marketing strategy but also gathered the proper analytics and data that can be used for future marketing campaigns.
In conclusion,
Mobile advertising has certainly advanced with the use of technology such as digital billboards, Geopath, and augmented reality. You will surely be able to increase brand awareness for your company by gathering analytics to generate as much information as possible about your target audience. You’ll also be able to see who’s actually viewing your ads so that you can reach them more precisely. It becomes evident how much the future of mobile advertising will influence consumers with these advancements in technology. As a result, they will have a big impact on the advertising industry, not just on the streets, but also via online advertising, never letting the customer forget about your brand.
