Would You Go to Court Without an Attorney? Why OOH Advertising Needs Expert Navigation
- Rick Robinson
- May 1
- 6 min read
Written by: Rick Robinson, CEO | PJX Media
You wouldn't file corporate taxes without a CPA or go to court without an attorney. Why would you navigate the intricate world of out-of-home advertising without an expert partner?
Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising is much like these scenarios, where having an agent working on your behalf can significantly impact your outcomes and ensure the process runs smoothly. While new tools are released every day to automate OOH planning and execution, OOH agency partners serve a critical role in helping brands successfully manage, mitigate, and get ahead of potential issues.
As the CEO of PJX Media and someone who's spent decades helping brands maximize their OOH impact, I've seen firsthand how the "do-it-yourself" approach to OOH planning and buying can lead to missed opportunities and unnecessary complexity.
The learning curve involves mastering a fragmented landscape, having the bandwidth to manage multiple moving pieces, and retaining awareness of your overarching campaign goals and strategy.
How can you handle the unique complexities of OOH? Here’s a practical framework that will help you decide when to keep OOH in-house and when to partner with expert specialists.
Understanding the Unique Complexity of OOH
Out-of-home isn't like other advertising channels. It exists in physical spaces. You don't simply upload a creative file and hit "publish." The medium is fragmented, with hundreds of suppliers, non-uniform inventory, and market-specific nuances that can make or break a campaign.
For example, we helped Solidigm, a data storage company, launch a synchronized global campaign across New York, Shanghai, Tokyo, Berlin, and London. Each market had different suppliers, inventory available, and specific nuances. This level of complexity demands expertise.
Four Key Factors to Decide Whether You Need an Agency for OOH
1. How much OOH knowledge do you have?
The OOH landscape is increasingly fragmented. There are region-specific factors and specialized knowledge that can influence the success of your campaign.
Consider: Local market knowledge with global scale.
A bulletin in LA serves a different purpose than in NYC. They will also have their own local regulations, media availability, and perform differently. Out-of-home agencies can help you understand market trends. Working with an OOH agency for international campaigns gives you peace of mind that you are in compliance and that your ad will run as scheduled.
Consider: Strategic Understanding of Ad Space
To optimize ad impact, it’s crucial to understand the nuances of each placement.
Considerations include:
Ad Space Layout: Knowing the layout helps tailor creative elements for maximum visibility and focal impact.
Neighborhood Context: You can adjust your creatives to resonate with local communities.
Inventory Limitations: Avoid placement issues, like obstructions blocking key messages or branding.
Consumer Viewing Habits: Create ad copy to match the viewer’s dwell time, ensuring messages are easily digestible.
Experts in OOH will have an understanding of the market and be able to help you best position your creatives for maximum impact.
Consider: Production & Installation Support
Beyond planning and strategy, OOH specialists manage the production and installation of OOH ads, ensuring high-quality execution. They coordinate with media suppliers and provide:
Design Guidance: They ensure your ad design aligns with best practices for visibility and impact.
Permit Acquisition: OOH agencies handle permits, ensuring your ad is legally compliant.
Quality Control: They oversee installation and ensure your ad is displayed as intended.
Ongoing Maintenance: Specialists can manage upkeep or creative swaps if needed.
Working with Summer Fridays, the brand often activates a mix of different OOH formats, both digital and traditional/static, across different markets. For example, airport security trays require different specs and approach than a billboard. Having OOH expertise in production empowers brands to create these special OOH moments.
2. How much bandwidth is needed?
When brands handle OOH advertising internally, there’s potential to underestimate the hidden costs and time commitment required to plan, buy, and activate campaigns. Without a dedicated OOH partner, challenges may include managing multiple vendor relationships, understanding and executing on bespoke logistics, and more.
If you don’t have the bandwidth, then you will face hidden opportunity costs. Diverting your resources towards planning and buying OOH can detract from your overarching campaign goals, especially if you are running a multi-channel campaign.
These hidden costs can add up quickly, taking you over budget and straining resources.
Consider:
Time-Intensive Vendor Management: While coordinating with a single supplier is manageable, the standard, effective campaign (with multiple placements, multiple suppliers) can be time-consuming and overwhelming.
Resource Diversion: Internal teams may get pulled away from their core marketing strategies.
Trial and Error: Without industry expertise, brands may waste time and budget on ineffective placements.
Logistical Complexities: Managing intricate logistics without experience can reduce productivity and lead to costly errors.
Out-of-home agencies provide flexible support on demand, giving you access to expertise without the cost of hiring full-time staff so that you can create high-quality OOH campaigns as needed. Factoring time and a steep learning, hiring an OOH expert can actually be cost-effective.
Working with an OOH agency streamlines the entire process operationally and elevates your campaign's success through their expertise. Experienced OOH specialists can prevent and be proactive when issues arise, resulting in both cost and time savings for your campaign, while significantly improving your ROI over going it alone.
3. Whether you can obtain strategic distance for your overall campaign?
Brands need to maintain an objective distance from tactical details, so they can have a clearer view of how OOH fits into the broader marketing strategy. That’s why specialists can and should own your OOH investment. This collaboration lets brands focus on high-level strategy while experts manage the execution, allowing data-driven decisions rather than being limited by inventory availability.
As an advertiser, you want to be able to consider your campaigns from a higher altitude so that you can understand how it mixes in with everything else you are doing. Having the ability to look at it from a top-down view allows you to see how it strategically and tactically connects to everything else you’re doing.
Key Advantages of Partnering with an OOH Advertising Expert
Objectivity in Execution: By handling logistics and tactical decisions, OOH experts allow you to remain focused on strategic goals without getting bogged down in details.
Holistic Marketing Integration: With an objective partner, it’s easier to see how OOH aligns with your overall marketing mix, reinforcing your broader brand goals.
Data-Driven Decisions: Instead of basing decisions solely on what’s available, you can leverage industry data to make informed choices that support campaign objectives.
In-Depth Reporting for Future Insights: OOH agencies can provide you with campaign measurement, analytics, customized reports, and ongoing monitoring of your campaign. This gives you in-depth knowledge of how your campaign is performing and helps inform future campaigns.
4. Do you have access to OOH tribal knowledge?
One main benefit of working with experts in OOH is that they are solely committed to the medium that is OOH and have built deep industry relationships. Leveraging these relationships, they can help you:
Gain early access to premium inventory.
Secure volume discounts and deals.
Understand pricing trends and availability to make informed decisions on the best placements.
Package multiple formats and markets effectively.
Though anyone can negotiate with media owners to find a placement, OOH agencies have built rapport with suppliers. They may be in touch with suppliers multiple times a day. OOH agencies bring steady business to media owners, which encourages media owners to work with them to negotiate better rates. They also have backstage access to what is happening with inventory in a market.
When in-house OOH makes sense
Let's be transparent: there are situations where handling OOH in-house can work. If you're looking to maintain a single billboard near your headquarters, the execution is manageable. But as soon as you start wanting to buy more of the medium, you start realizing there’s more suppliers out there, and that the markets are different. Like a chef in the kitchen, the spice rack of options is extensive, and it quickly becomes overwhelming.
But if you would like to do it on your own, here are the situations where it can work:
Small, simple, campaigns with just one to a few placements working with a single supplier.
If you already have in-house expertise at your organization.
If you love DIY, you can learn the industry, after all, we did. But will navigating the world of OOH detract from your other efforts?
Data and reporting depth: you will likely not have the same access to planning and measurement tools as an OOH expert would have, which could make it difficult to report on your efforts.
Making Your Decision
Ask yourself these questions:
Are you looking at a single placement or a scalable campaign?
Do you know where your audience in your target market is and the inventory options available?
Do you have the internal bandwidth to manage multiple vendor relationships?
Can you access real-time inventory availability across markets?
Do you understand the nuances of different formats and locations?
Do you have the tools to report on your OOH and prove ROI on your investments?
The Bottom Line
While there's a place for in-house OOH management, the complexity of modern OOH advertising typically demands specialist expertise. Just as you trust professionals with legal and financial matters, partnering with OOH experts can be the difference between a high-effort campaign that merely exists and a minimum-effort one that excels.
In most cases, you shouldn’t buy out-of-home media without an advocate working alongside you. Let us help you focus on the big picture of your overall campaign by taking care of all of the little details that come with OOH. Contact us to get started.
