Digital Video Advertising’s Glow is Promising

Jan 18, 2010•Blog Posts• General Marketing• Online & Digital Media• by author

Tom S.

Out of Home (OOH) digital video display is gaining popularity as a way for marketers to reach the ever discerning consumer. These digital displays are being used by numerous venues including grocery stores, hospitals, restaurants, and colleges/universities in storefronts, on public buses, billboards, gas pumps and bus stops. A 2009 Arbition study of the effectiveness of OOH video marketing revealed that digital media displays reach 53% of American adults a month – including me.

Recently a new burger restaurant opened up near my neighborhood in Chicago. The restaurant serves up custom built burgers to cater to the most discriminating of tastes. As I watched the progression of the construction unfold, nothing struck me as extraordinary about this restaurant visually. I decided to check out their menu online – definitely not trying to reinvent the wheel with the menu. Even after walking by this new restaurant for nearly two months after it opened, I had no desire to ever stop in, until the day I saw the glow. Walking home one evening, I couldn’t help but notice the bright vibrant glow coming from the restaurant’s front door. I had to stop and look. There it was, a digital media display showing one of the most amazing looking burgers I had ever seen. I could literally see the juices dripping from the burger on display. That did it for me. I had to at least try one of those burgers. I proceeded to visit the restaurant later that week with four of my friends.

I would consider myself a pretty savvy consumer. I am an educated college graduate with a  knowledge of the advertising that marketers often use to ploy people into purchasing. OOH video displays are not necessarily a ploy, but rather a response to our ever-increasing “visually stimulated society”. Everything about the burger restaurant’s digital display caught my attention. It was short, to the point, and showed me exactly what I wanted to see without wasting my time. In case I wasn’t convinced by the photo, also on display was a comment from Oprah Winfrey dubbing their burger as one of the best in America. Anyone (especially Chicagoans) know that aligning yourself with Oprah is tapping into a huge consumer base and fan following.

If the restaurant had their OOH video display up one month earlier, they would have had one more month of my loyal support and probably others’ support as well. As digital media displays become more affordable to businesses, it is no doubt that we will begin to see them in places we never thought we would. But as digital video displays inundate our lives, will consumers become desensitized to their draw? Will shopping malls and grocery stores become mini Times Squares, packed with flashing lights and displays? Will this advertising always work as well as it did on me?