Demographic Audience Analysis and Why It Matters for DOOH
Traditionally, the success of out-of-home (OOH) advertising has been difficult to track. With the advent of digital out-of-home advertising (DOOH), however, this is changing rapidly.
Along with digital screens, high-tech audience analysis solutions are bringing a whole new dimension to the OOH industry. The new possibilities for demographic audience analysis provide a good example.
What is demographic audience analysis?
Demographic audience analysis refers to the process of establishing certain characteristics of a particular group of people, such as age and gender.
This type of data provides valuable insight and enables you to target and tailor your communication so that you are able to engage that group of people more effectively.
In the past, demographic audience analysis for D/OOH advertising relied on methods that were either time-consuming, cumbersome, inaccurate, or a combination of these. Often, methods would rely on manual observation combined with sampling. Today, however, advertisers and media owners have much more sophisticated analytics tools at their disposal. Wi-Fi beacons, Bluetooth beacons, and AI-based Face Analysis Technology can now provide accurate and detailed insights into out-of-home audiences.
How does this relate to DOOH?
Sophisticated demographic audience analysis holds benefits for multiple stakeholders within the DOOH landscape.
For billboard and digital signage network owners: One important benefit is that it helps attract advertisers to their network. When network owners can share clear, accurate audience data with advertisers, it helps them to persuade advertisers that their ads will be seen by the right people and that their ad money will be well spent. And when they can prove that the audiences are highly relevant to a particular advertiser, they can charge a higher rate per impression for those ads.
For advertisers: The benefits include accurate targeting, better engagement, and eventually a higher ROI. Advertisers are usually under a lot of pressure to prove the effectiveness of their campaigns, and with the right type of audience analysis, it becomes much easier for them to do so. This technology can be used in three stages:
Pre-validation: collecting data on the average audience type and traffic for each screen/location (this information can also come from the media owner)
Dynamic campaigns: based on previously collected data, advertisers formulate targeted campaigns with content designed for a specific demographic group. These campaigns will be delivered dynamically whenever an individual from the target demographic is detected by the camera.
Performance measurement: during the time the targeted creatives are running, data on performance is collected to measure the effectiveness of personalization. The different KPIs can be specified by the advertiser or brand but some examples of metrics that can be measured by video analytics are: increased attention time per ad type, increased impression rate per ad type, increased viewing rate of target demographic group per ad type, increased positive sentiment (smile) per ad type and many more.
For everyone: Another benefit of demographic audience analysis is that it enables highly targeted programmatic advertising campaigns within DOOH networks. While most people associate programmatic advertising with the online world, it is becoming increasingly popular in the realm of offline advertising. While programmatic DOOH might not be based on real-time auctions in the same way that online programmatic advertising is, it delivers many of the same advantages, such as:
Maximizing the use of the available advertising space (which leads to more revenue for the ad publishers)
Delivering the right ads to the right target audience at the right time and in the right place (which increases advertising ROI, increases engagement, and improves customer experience)
Making it easier for advertisers to purchase relevant advertising space
Reducing the manual work involved in securing ad placements
How to do demographic audience analysis for DOOH using face analysis
One of the most popular tools for demographic audience analysis in DOOH today is AI-based face analysis.
Face analysis uses a combination of strategically placed cameras and AI-powered software to:
Detect the number of faces passing within a viewable distance of a screen (people count, impressions, and viewers)
Recognize the age and gender of the detected faces
Determine attention time (how many times did the viewers look at the screen, and for how long)
Finally, you can integrate the data from face analysis software with a reporting dashboard or a CMS directly to track and compare the performance of content delivered in real time.