In general, offline media spots are booked over the long term, thus typically making them inflexible and fixed.

However, the efficiency of a campaign increases if it can be automatically controlled and optimised according to data. In the online world, this approach – under the title of programmatic advertising – is currently one of the most important areas of change in the media industry.

For our customer Apollo-Optik, we wanted to act as a first mover to make the leap from the digital world, where this booking method has been exclusively used to date, to an offline media channel.

First we calculated a threshold value of average footfall specific to each 14 test shop. This threshold value formed the starting position.

Our three temporal phases:

Until 1 p.m.:

Analysis phase

An automatic hourly analysis determined the number of visitors via the frequency scanners of the individual shops and compared these figures to the previously calculated threshold value.

At 1 p.m.:

Decision phase

At this point, the decision was made whether the previous morning could be defined as good or bad using the calculated threshold value for each shop.

1 p.m. to 5 p.m.:

Action phase

If the threshold value is reached or exceeded, there was no need to act and no ads were broadcast.

If the number of visitors in the morning was below the threshold value, however, 12-second radio spots were automatically broadcast on the same afternoon via the station in the city where the branch is located.

With this programmatic radio campaign, we were able to efficiently boost the footfall in the branches in real time and specific to each location. Through the flexible placement, we achieved an increase in footfall up to 9%.

In addition to this success, we enabled our customer Apollo-Optik to broadcast paid spots only in exactly those moments which made the most sense with regard to market and location.