The Evolution of Programmatic DOOH: Beyond Planning and Buying with Brooke Ermogenis, Founder of doohx.io

00:00 Tim Rowe Brooke, welcome back. It's always exciting to have a follow-up conversation, a part two, and especially with yourself. I don't know if you know this. I might have shared it last time we connected, but the episode we recorded together when you were still living on the boat is the most downloaded episode ever. So, Brooke, the most downloaded episode ever guest, welcome back. Thank you very much for having me. Excited to be here. Absolutely. And last time we talked, you were living on a boat with your husband, traveling around the world. I think it was in the midst of COVID, you've since landed, you're planting roots.

00:39 Brooke Ermogenis Yes, yes. We kind of got over the overcompensation for the COVID lockdowns and did that for two years and it was great. And now I kind of settled on land again, which is a nice change,

00:49 Tim Rowe I have to say. Excellent. Well, we prepared a few questions here specifically around programmatic. It's such a hot topic and everyone wants more information. It means so many different things to so many people. It can change definition by region. And so there's a lot here. We're going to unpack some of that. But the first thing that I'd love to get your thoughts on with programmatic moving as fast as it is. It seems like there's a disconnect between maybe OOH specialist agencies, programmatic buying teams, and media companies. That's a lot and it's hard to navigate, which is part of the challenge you're trying to solve through education and enablement, you know, creating a unified source of truth of how we all learn and think about these things. But why specifically, why should programmatic DOOH be on the menu for brands? As we're closing out 2023, we're getting ready to head into 2024. Why should programmatic

01:50 Brooke Ermogenis DOOH be a consideration, do you think? Yeah, I mean, OOH advertising is now, as we know, like the fastest growing media in the world, it's even overtaken social media now. And I think that growth can really be attributed to two different things. One being the digitization and sort of consolidation of OOH inventory, a lot more sort of moving from static over to digital and a lot more is being consolidated within single platforms. And then of course, programmatic do as well, because it's allowing a much wider range of buyers to include digital out of home in their broadcast media strategy. And that's obviously bringing with it new budgets compared to what OOH would have had before. So if companies want to keep up with the growth in market, then programmatic do is going to be an essential part of the equation. And that goes to publishers, buyers and all the tech players in between. You know, it's not just the additional budgets that the interest is going to benefit from, you know, programmatic do obviously allows for more efficient planning in every sense of the word, streamlining resources needed from both the time and budget perspective to execute targeted contextual dynamic campaigns, you know, much easier than ever before. With the other benefit, of course, of seamless integration of a more sort of advanced creative applications as well. So, you know, the most exciting thing about programmatic, I think, moving forward is that the planning and buying process is just the tip of the iceberg really, as to what we're going to be capable of. There's going to be a very interesting conversation coming up around the evolution of, you know, in terms of content network structures, and the cost, the cross pollination of content between OOH and other digital mediums as well. Not to mention all the new out of home networks that are going to be coming in, you know, people are setting up more sort of place based media that are more sort of niche and contextual. And all of that's facilitated by programmatic do because the ease of which it integrates with the rest of OOH and with other digital mediums as well. So it's, I think what we're seeing now in programmatic do is really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of, yes, it's easier to plan and buy campaigns and that sort of thing. But I think it's going to lead

03:51 Tim Rowe to a sort of whole evolution of OOH as a sector as well. Let's maybe double click into that specifically, because I think that's a great point in that targeting the planning, it's really reached parody, everyone has about the same type of resources and that can be applied to obviously DOOH, traditional static out of home, alternative media formats, even even some of the wrapped car, you know, moving ad type formats that are using some of this data and targeting. But what does it look like from a media integration standpoint, when you when you talk about that, what, what's possible in a future state like you just described?

04:34 Brooke Ermogenis Yeah, I mean, it's so interesting because, I mean, you know, OOH is sort of the only medium at the moment that has ads as its foundation. Like that's the offering is ads. And everywhere else, it's, you know, it's content with ads sort of scattered out between. And that's how they're sort of monetizing it. But OOH is really just ads with a little bit of content thrown in in terms of news and that sort of stuff. So it's this underutilized platform for content. And when you look at other digital mediums, you know, like the social medias of the world, you know, they can really be using OOH to make their content more contextual sort of in the real world, like take it off the screen and put it into the real world as well. You know, you know, travel influences, putting putting up on screens in hotels and that sort of, you know, I mean, just like sort of a cross pollination between what's possible on social media, what's possible in OOH, you know, it's a new sort of format for them. But at the end of the day, it's just contextualizing what what they're already offering just in a sort of more real world way. So I think the content side of things is going to continue to evolve a lot now to find because at the moment, yeah, I mean, it's it's it's just an ad format, which when you think about it is actually quite odd when you compare it to other digital mediums.

05:44 Tim Rowe Really great point. Right, when you start to think about how can I integrate the use of this canvas, this this real world digital screen in a hotel room or a painted wall scape downtown, whatever it is, how am I how am I planning my media strategy around all of those elements? It seems fragmented and fractured and hard. Do you see that reintegration happening within agencies? Is it different between big holdcos versus maybe a local regional agency? How do you think that comes together like the team element, the teams that are individually executing all these things? Seems like they need to be in the same room. Does that happen?

06:29 Brooke Ermogenis I mean, for sure. I mean, it does on one level. But I think I think we're going to see as the sort of tech continues to progress, and the kind of traditional loop structures of DOOH is is is challenged. You know, we're going to get to the point where it's possible for people within proximity to any screen to be able to put up their own content like then and there. So it's not necessarily reliant on, you know, big agencies making a big decision and putting out a big campaign. It can literally happen in the moment. And people can be promoting themselves, their businesses, you know, it can happen on a much more sort of micro individual level as well as a huge campaign level. And I think the more that starts happening, the more the agencies are going to

07:11 Tim Rowe sort of, you know, wake up a bit to what the possibilities are. And I think we'll start to see how people approach these big campaigns sort of adapt, you know, accordingly. And I think that that really represents kind of one of the beachheads that we need to take. Because when we can get the consumer mindset, thinking about how do I write, how do I as an influencer, how do I take advantage of this real time broadcast element for my own interest, now that consumer behavior is driving broader marketing adoption. We've seen that obviously, Facebook and Google, right? The things that we use every day, the things that we are, are using ourselves end up being the things that we spend a lot of money advertising on Amazon. Do you think that that

08:02 Brooke Ermogenis holds true? Is that something you think is an element? Absolutely. I mean, yeah, like I said, it's not contingent on having a huge, you know, big broadcast campaign for a huge launch of something or other, you know, it's going to get a lot more personalized. I mean, akin to, I suppose, what already happens online, where you serve to personalize ad, thanks to cookies and whatever. It'll be similar to that, but not obviously in the same way, given its cook of this environment, but it will just become more personalized and more targeted slowly, while also kind of obeying the laws of privacy and data restrictions and that sort of thing. But it's just a really interesting new kind of canvas. And I think a lot of now that programmatic do is bringing all of the other digital mediums kind of closer towards using OOH, there's going to be a lot more kind of thought between how mediums can really complement each other. And not just in the sense like have this campaign, this campaign, this campaign, and it can work together, but actually utilizing the other mediums for the other mediums advantage, if that makes sense. So it's going to be very

09:09 Tim Rowe interesting for years, I think. It's the funniest use of mediums using other mediums. I always see it on a TV commercial. Companies love to use OOH in their TV commercials. You ever notice that? Like, I don't know, AT&T, like I've seen a lot of cable companies do it. It's interesting. It's really interesting to think about the way that OOH gets used in the rest of the marketing mix. Something that I think is a sticking point for a lot of folks is measurement. And measurement seems to mean different things to different people. Some groups, some conversations, measurement means how do we count impressions? In other conversations, specifically with brands and marketers, measurement means did this make me money? Can I see the impact to my bottom line? Is there a feedback loop that I can optimize to? Where does measurement stand in this conversation?

10:14 Brooke Ermogenis The eternal question for OOH, isn't it? But I mean, OOH is sort of always suffered at the peril of, you know, I guess they say like comparison is the thief of joy. It's kind of like that with measurement when it comes to OOH because they're always comparing it to other mediums and saying, well, you know, here it's, you know, one impression, one click, one buy. Why can't it be that simple? But it's just a completely different medium. We have to think of it differently. So I find that, you know, like ROI, for example, it's quite a restrictive term that's been born of the sort of singular reporting and results of other digital mediums. And the benefits of OOH advertising go far beyond the sort of view click purchase mentality of online. And while yes, there are some instances where, you know, you can calculate, you know, increased footfall or in store sales through POS data or mobile tracking or, you know, direct sales aren't always the KPIs for an OOH campaign. So, I mean, for instance, OOH is like the king of brand awareness, right? So, you know, provides that mass reach and an incredible creative canvas for brands to utilize. But ROI is not the metric needed to validate the success of an awareness campaign. So why is this metric that marketers are still so stuck on? So, you know, true ROI, for example, is not always going to be a straight line between money spent and money gained in out of home. So there needs to be a consideration for a much more sort of holistic view on the impact of OOH as a medium. Otherwise, marketers are going to forgo the biggest advantages of the medium by chasing the sort of wrong, you know, type of success data. The same goes for impressions as well. You know, just because you have 20 million impressions, what does that actually mean for a campaign and its success? It's, you know, it's a moving yardstick for everyone that you do. So I'm

11:55 Tim Rowe not sure why it's a sort of sticking point that everyone's so obsessed with trying to measure all the time. Well, that is sound perspective. And I think it's a piece of the talk track that we all need to adopt and that education, the enablement of a brand in understanding, it's not linear. It's going to show up in lots of different ways. It's going to bring down your cost per click, your click through rates are going to go up, right? It's, it's not just put up a billboard and then see this line item in your reporting where billboard created XYZ return. There's some platforms that allow you to see, hey, which, which formats are working hardest in this. But at the end of the day, it's does this make sense for me? Is it in front of the audience? Did it exactly the most important part? Did I get the creative right? Like if your creative stings, I don't know how this is

12:55 Brooke Ermogenis because I mean, they're like, Oh, how do we measure every tiny impression and what and most of them creative is like an afterthought for most campaigns. It's like, well, it doesn't matter because even if you have 20 million impressions, no one's getting the point because you forgot to put your logo on there. You know what I mean? It's like creative should be king and then the story tells itself. You know what I mean? And not to mention the fact that OOH and you'll find OOH is the only medium where it's published on other mediums as news as content being like, did you see this amazing install for, you know, this 3d billboard and wherever, you know, there's a whole narrative that can be done. You can only buy one billboard and have an amazing creative and it could go completely viral online. You know what I mean? So it's like the execution of the creative is, is everything in the story you're trying to tell us everything. And yet people are just like, well, how do I count my impressions? It's like, well, let's, let's prioritize first, shall we? You know, there's some other, there's some other metrics that may be more important.

13:52 Tim Rowe It's crazy. Send this episode to a creative in your life. Please thank your creative. Thank your creative director today. Let's, let's do more to, to celebrate the creatives, the real estate people that give us places to put our ads up. Yeah. We get lost in, in some of the minutiae.

14:14 Brooke Ermogenis The sad thing is the creatives, I think they would love to have more fun with it, but they get like last minute sort of, you know, oh, we've got a campaign going live in two weeks. Give us something. Oh yeah. But we could do, oh, I'm sure it's frustrating for every sign. Yeah, exactly. But anyway, that's another, that's another episode. I need a design tomorrow

14:33 Tim Rowe and I don't have a creative brief. Sorry if they was stumbling over you there. Yeah, I think there's a lot of frustration around that, that, that part of the, that part of the equation. But we led with education and enablement. You launched doohx.io a few years ago. It's grown a ton. I've seen lots of folks posting their certifications and sharing the things that they've learned about how has the platform evolved? What's next? What's coming? Kind of give folks that maybe aren't familiar yet with the platform a little

15:09 Brooke Ermogenis bit of 101. Yeah. So we launched, we launched almost two years ago now. You know, the idea was to create sort of accessible, centralized, you know, global standard of education that people can access from wherever they are, whenever they want. That allows them to like understand the foundations of OOH and, and programmatic DOOH. So we have our two 101 forces, which is P2.101 and DOOH 101. We've got a P2.1 advanced course. We've got a programmatic do for buyers specifically, and programmatic do for publishers which will be coming out in the next month as well. And we felt like those, the certifications are really good for laying the foundations. They're great for sort of onboarding new staff for training internally, for anyone that's new to the industry or new to types of, you know, parts of the industry. It's a great way to sort of get the foundational knowledge settled. And that's what we've seen from markets all over the world in the past few years, which has been amazing. But now I think the industry is sort of evolving and changing at such a rapid rate. And there's so many exciting things to be talking about, but a certification once every, you know, sort of six months is really not enough to keep up with, with the demand for knowledge. So we're sort of shifting a bit and we're putting out an app in the next couple of weeks, which will be sort of a community based subscription model where we'll be releasing short form content, educational content on a weekly basis rather than every few months. So members will have access to all of the certification courses that we have, plus another sort of five certifications worth of content on an annual basis, which will be sort of dripped on a weekly basis and people can interact, they can like, they can comment, they can talk to each other. There's a membership directory so you can get in touch with people from the industry, from all over the world. You know, the closest thing we have to this at the moment is sort of LinkedIn really, but that's, you know, OOH kind of gets lost in the sea of everything else there. But this platform, you can have it on your phone, you can log in and type in, you know, how does a publisher integrate with an SSP for programmatic do, and a video will pop up and teach you all about it. So it's really just a centralized database that we're going to be building on and building on over the next few years that will allow anyone anywhere anytime to just log in and learn sort of whatever they want. And also a place for us to have the kind of conversations that's going to shape the next phase of the industry. You know, we're going to be talking about, you know, things like the influence of AI over the next few years, and even going back to static OOH for a while to see how the automation has sort of taken a hold there and what the changes are. So just a place where, you know, that we can have this kind of global conversation because it's so interesting to me seeing how, like you were saying at the beginning, you know, every different market is at a different phase with, you know, with programmatic do with DOOH in general. So I think opening those lines of communication, as well as having some content that's in local languages for, you know, the Latin American market, the Asian market, you know, it's just going to consolidate that conversation sort of, I think, hopefully,

18:06 Tim Rowe push us all forward at a more sort of, you know, level base than we had before. S sounds like the place to be. I'll be there for sure. I love the social element and being able to create a dialogue, a global dialogue that's real time, and about the same types of content. I don't think it's crossed probably anyone's mind here in the States how load shedding in some countries is impacting, you know, programmatic even being available. And what the heck does that all mean? So to understand, I think what other folks are going through and how we're all solving problems, that kind of cross pollination, like you described, that's that's an exciting advancement.

18:55 Brooke Ermogenis So when will that all be be online? When can folks look forward to that? So we're launching on the 12th of September, the new app. So people will be able to sign up, actually, as of next week, they'll be able to sign up, pre sign up before we go live. All of our existing students will get access anyway, they'll get a free trial to log into the new platform to see to see what it's all about. And yeah, we'll start releasing content from day one. So it's very exciting times for us. It's going to be it's going to be interesting.

19:23 Tim Rowe That's that'll be the day this episode comes out. So if you're listening to this, that's today, September 12 is today, you don't even need to look down if you're listening to this on the day that it's coming out. If you're hearing it after that, then then you're behind. So need to get there. Where do folks go if they want to connect with you learn more about everything

19:44 Brooke Ermogenis that we talked about? Where where the best place is given the latin long. So they can contact me directly brooke at doex.io. The website is going to be sort of relaunching next week with all the information about the new platform all about the membership what's included the sort of content plan that we're putting together so you know what to expect. And then the app will be available on

20:04 Tim Rowe both Apple and Android as of as of the 12th September. Excellent. We'll link to all that to make it really convenient for everybody. Brooke, I can't thank you enough for being back for a second time. Thank you. We'll be looking forward to part three. Lovely. Sounds good. Thank you so much. Thanks again. If you found this to be helpful, please share it with somebody who could benefit. As always, make sure to smash that subscribe button and wherever you're listening, leave the podcast review. That's how you help us grow. We'll see you all next time.