OOH ads may take on a new dimension – audio targeted in stores
While in-store spoken advertising is nothing new, so marketers are covenanting to introduce message targeting techniques in „more of their style”. By recognizing the power of sound, attempts are being made to personalize it, even in public spaces.
It is 3 p.m. You get out of bed carefree, wondering how to use the last day of your vacation this year. You realize it’s late in the morning. The “morning” toilet, making the bed, getting dressed and you hear that famous burping in your stomach. You are suffering from a condition called hunger. You open the fridge and find it’s empty. You quickly run into a nearby hypermarket. Calm music puts you in a trance. Like a gopher, you’re walking among freshly baked bread, the crunch of which you can hear in the hands of some guy next to you. You turn around, the cheese display. – Gee, I don’t know what to decide on – you state with sadness and remind yourself of a burping stomach. In a swift, sweeping motion you pull everything off the shelves. – Dear customers, we remind you that only today the promotion on basil, minus 40 percent – you hear the message, already having a delicious herb-based sauce in your head. You leave the store with a full bag of products and a smile on your face, which disappears the moment you look at the receipt.
This parable illustrates the full shopping experience, what today we would call the customer journey and user experience, only it’s an offline version.
Even though the world is becoming increasingly digital and shopping is increasingly done online, there are some stores that are doing quite well and will continue to do so for many years to come. We are talking about grocery stores, pharmacies or household appliances and electronics. Grocery values available immediately are more affordable to customers than expected in delivery. When sick, the availability of medication also seems more intuitive in the smallest possible time frame. Consumers who are also aware of the risk of fraud or product damage during delivery, may decide not to order electronic equipment, which is not cheap.
Stores are very important even for consumers ordering online, because in traditional stores they can even try on shoes they are hunting for, or check the operation of the phone and whether the camera they advertise is really so great. Analogue POS are, as you can see, also points in the shopping journey even of those customers who will not buy the product directly from them.
In terms of web analytics, we would call this a mini-conversion as measured in a particular attribution model that includes this type of product data acquisition as an element to support a conversion, which in this case is a purchase.
What about this audio?
Stationary stores are an important source of shopping from the point of view of customers, salespeople, but also marketers. Those could be innovative in creating visual communications in the form of eye-catching colors, packaging, signs or banners. They compete in the appearance of shelves, the spatial placement of specific items, or even the smell they give off! The effect of music on the mood of customers has also been proven, and megaphones have begun to be used for messages, not just employee messages, but advertising and promotional messages. Outdoor advertising, however, has the weakness that it is not cheap compared to digital and it is not as effective, which may change, especially when it comes to the audio segment.
Outdoor in audio
Sound has a much more powerful impact when it’s pleasant and informative, and in a jungle of products, brand branding alone may not be enough, as US CEO Michael Lieberman of Kinetic Worldwide agrees. – Sound reaches every shopper in every aisle, making it an effective form of “last mile” advertising – says Lieberman, also acknowledging that this too has its limitations in the form of a single message across a hands-free system. The message itself is like a coin consisting of an eagle and a check – it’s a problem for two reasons – the message is one and doesn’t reach everyone, in a word not everyone needs to hear it, taking up space for another message to reach them, which is the second problem.
New – personalized in-store audio ads
According to adexchanger.com through its ad services platform for digital retailers, Quotient, is set to bring automated audio ad buying to grocery and drugstores. Audio resources, in turn, are to be shared by InStore Audio Network, which aggregates digital in-store audio messages among retailers in the US.
How guided audio is supposed to work?
Ad spots to be targeted based on data segments held by Quotient, which are derived from aggregated mobile device IDs. The badges are supposed to show where people are, which stores they visit and which screens they pass.
The company Quotient conducts research, observing changes in the way customers navigate through stores and screens, but does not do so without their consent. Customers empower her to do so through one of the coupon apps. The goal is to identify locations that present well to customers. Advertising is to be directed not at individuals per se, but at the place where being there determines the specific needs by which consumers make decisions. – Sound is useful because you can help make decisions based on exactly where someone is, not necessarily who they are – said Dave Etherington, chief marketing officer at Quotient. advertisements in Place Exchange.
Interestingly, this way of advertising gives various possibilities of measuring its effectiveness and scaling its actions. You can study sales attribution rates, for example, by combining audio exposure data in correlation back to loyalty card and purchase data. Advertisers can also study the increase in shopper desire or product recommendation at the point of contact with a voice message.
Actions in chain stores also give you tremendous scale. – In-store audio can be a performance channel, and that allows us to tap into shoppers’ money on a national level – says Norm Chait, Chief Marketing Officer at. -of-home in Quotient.
– The audience-based approach, shorter lead times and national scale can be compelling arguments for OOH for brands that have viewed out-of-home advertising efforts as too local, too long to market, or for those that never thought of them as channel strengths – trhymes Lieberman.
Innovation is chasing innovation, and marketing zones that some consider extinct are still doing a great job. This is confirmed by banners with Lewandowski promoting Huawei, a huge mask on the Cracow market advertising La Casa de Papel, or the case of using sound sets in store chains discussed above. Coherence of tradition with technology, or the aftermath of modern marketing? In our view, yes, let’s not forget that despite the impact of digital, we still live analog.