Our insight was simple; if programmatic advertising has revolutionised digital media it stands to reason that it would benefit other media channels too.

So we decided to use programmatic to manage the planning and buying of digital out of home, so that the channel could leverage the same capabilities of a desktop or mobile campaign.

Our idea was to build a way to pool inventory together so that it could be recognised by a programmatic DSP (DoubleClick).

This meant that outdoor panels could masquerade as physical websites, allowing us to programmatically buy presence around London as though they were ad units on a homepage.

Our creative executions and media targeting were based on the use of real-time data.

By understanding environmental factors such as weather, traffic and sporting events we were able to build a picture of where people were and what they were most interested in.

All of this information allowed us to know what Google product would be most relevant and useful for the people we were reaching. So, commuters on a cold evening was shown hot food recipes from YouTube creators, whilst groups of football fans heading to stadium were given traffic suggestions on how best to get there.

We even tapped into live cultural moments; and within seconds of the winning try at the Rugby World Cup we showed relevant search examples related to the winning team.

Using a dynamic template, not used previously in outdoor, we created over 250 unique messages to mirror our audience’s interests.

We established a number of digital first approaches to our measurement.

Using our real-time delivery data, we were able to understand who had been exposed to our programmatic campaigns vs. the standard test version. This allowed us to understand the value of programmatic over a traditional approach.

From the study we saw a 45% increase in media efficiency; proving that programmatic can drive a huge level of value for brands.

In terms of the consumer benefit, we saw a 54% increase in the contextual relevance of programmatic ads. This meant that people felt the messages were more tailored to their circumstances, and therefore more useful.

Just as importantly, we were able to prove that the concept of programmatic out of home can work in a live campaign scenario and showed the industry what advertising will look in the not too distant future.