How to perform for Dynamic Audiences

By Flux | April 2021
How to make billboards
perform for dynamic
audiences
Scale Relevance into the Real-World
with Data and Machine Learning

Contents
Introduction
The Age of Relevance
Reconceiving the role of Billboards
Redefining Billboards
1. Data
Establish a Data Foundation
2. Model
Build Relevance into every Performance
3. Approach
Treat Data and Creativity equally
Key Takeaways
Transform marketing agility
from theory into practice
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Perform for dynamic audiences

Introduction
The gap between audience expectation
and out-of-home performance

There is a gap between audience expectation and
billboard performance
Audiences expect real world relevance.
Creating personal & “human” experiences across every moment, channel and
decision-making stage has been the ultimate goal in the digital age.
Relevance, in the form of recommending content or products at exactly the
right moment, is now recognised as essential for growth.
Accenture recently found companies are losing $1 trillion in annual revenues
to their competitors because they are not consistently relevant enough [1].
Mass
Market
Segment
Customer
Loyalty
Relevance
Furthermore, Salesforce shared that over 50% of B2C customers are likely to
switch companies if marketing communications are irrelevant to them [2}.
1960s - 1970s
1980s
1990s 2010s 2020s
But out-of-home, you can only achieve the same old act.
Despite its importance, marketers are still struggling to scale out a
sophisticated relevance agenda into the next big digital frontier, Digital
Billboards.
According to McKinsey, fewer than 10% of companies currently deploy
personalisation strategies beyond conventional digital channels in a
systematic way [3]. And VIOOH report that less than 5% of marketers are
taking advantage of programmatic trading [4].
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Perform for dynamic audiences
SOURCE Harvard Business Review

How to scale relevance into the real-world
Relevance is the key to exponential performance growth
Accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, relevance is no longer a
source of competitive advantage but essential to sustained
performance.
In this new era of digital-based competition, audiences are
increasingly buying because of a brand’s relevance to their
dynamic needs, in the moment.
Creating archetypal customers is challenging when demand
continuously fluctuates and is unpredictable.
As the world enters 2021, agile marketers that emerge with a
redefined understanding of real-world media and a bedrock of
programmatic technologies will be best positioned to start
exponentially scaling relevance.
Digital Billboards DSP Flux
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Perform for dynamic audiences

Redefining the role
of Billboards

Redefining the billboard
As society reconceives the role of physical objects and spaces, marketers must also reimagine
the role that digital screens play in the consumers decision making process
Traditional
A large, always-on outdoor sign for
showing broadcast advertisements
BRAND
Raising awareness through
contextually relevant content
PERFORMANCE
Iteratively adjusting media parameters
to increase consumer action

How can relevance be used?
Brand campaigns use relevance to enhance the
effectiveness of an awareness drive.
Traditional
Relevance
This is typically characterized, but not limited, by using
contextual data to fuel a rules-based campaign methodology.
One study found that ensuring brand campaigns are relevant
can increase brand recall by up to 48%.
Brand
Performance campaigns use relevance
as an intrinsic part of the objective.
Traditional
Relevance
Here, the purpose of the consumer interaction is to stimulate a
measurable and immediate response – the most sophisticated
being continuously optimised by live behavioural data.
Performance
We’ll now detail how marketers can scale both brand and
performance relevance through the following three steps: The
Data, The Model and Approach.
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Perform for dynamic audiences

The Data
Establish a real-world data foundation

Establish a
real-world data
foundation
The challenge for marketers in the real world is not
the quantity of data available to understand
consumer behaviour. Instead, the issue often lies with
its quality and the ability to build a suitable data
foundation for your company’s needs.
As a first step, audit your current data sources and analyse the
value and feasibility of potential uses.
This can range from basic relevance efforts, such as sales
promotions based on local sports results, to more sophisticated
capabilities, like featuring locally trending products at proximity
retailers.
Secondly, ensure that you have alignment of multiple teams – both
internally and externally.
Finally, develop a complete 360° view of the audience, and evaluate
the impact and feasibility of each new use case.
For instance, if you knew your audience’s local weather forecast and
stock inventory in proximity, could you discount dynamically
relevant and excess items.
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Perform for dynamic audiences

Data Sources to Fuel Real World Relevance
Typical Data Sources
Enhanced Data Sources
Historical
Behavioural Data
Static
Contextual Data
Real-Time
Contextual Data
CRM Data
Real-Time
Behavioural Data
Data Types
Audience Research
Context (Location,
language, culture)
Live context (date, time,
location, weather)
Live trending context
(news, topics, viral, social)
Sales info
Inventory Level info
Live on-site/ in-app
interaction (search, scrolldepth,
duration)
Live sentiment indicator
Examples
+ Activate where audience
historically visit
+ Activate on screens in
proximity to Burger King
+ Activate when snowing
+ Activate when ‘Climate
Change’ is trending
+ Activate when Whopper
In low demand
+ Activate when Whopper
inventory is high
+ Activate when mood
state is positive
Performance
Indicator
+ Activate by brand recall
+ Activate by store visits
+ Activate by ‘Burger King
Meltdown’ searches
+ Activate by ‘Whopper’
Sales
+ Activate by positive
facial detections
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Perform for dynamic audiences
EU Version

How MolsonCoors used their data to
understand what was driving
consumers to gas stations.
Working collaboratively with the data insights
team and external experts, marketers learned
that timely price promotions can positively
shape consumer behaviour.
This multi-year partnership has improved sales
performance by up to 40%
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Perform for dynamic audiences

The Model
Build relevance into every performance.

Build relevance into every performance
Example of Relevance Model
for a Fast-Food Restaurant
Once a data foundation has been established, marketers
(with the help of Data Science and Data Engineering) must
build a relevance model that’s suited to company goals.
Objective: Increase ‘Burger King Meltdown” searches
Rules-based models use data to create an array of rules, such
as “if this is delayed, then recommend this, to deliver
relevance at scale.
“Hey Flux, here are the
conditions we should use”
“Hey Flux, what are the best
conditions to use?”
Machine Learning, as a subset of artificial intelligence, is a
system of algorithms that automatically learns from data
input and make decisions towards a specific and defined
objective.
+ It’s Snowing
+ Climate Change is
trending
+ It’s Snowing
+ Climate Change is
trending
- 4%
+ 11%
+ In proximity to Store
+ In proximity to Store
- 5%
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Perform for dynamic audiences

How GlaxoSmithKline built an
optimisation model that only
activates when pollen is high.
Adopting an agile workflow meant GSK and
Publicis could build an optimisation model
capable of powering their programmatic
activations only when conditions were right.
The change in approach has encouraged YOY
doubling of Ad Spend since 2019.
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Perform for dynamic audiences

The Approach
Treat Data and Creativity as Equal Partners

A balance of logicians and magicians
Treat Data &
Creativity as
Equal Partners
Campaign
Strategist
Data
Analytics
Channel
Lead
Optimisation
Lead
Core
Team
Media
Lead
Project/
Campaign
Manager
A billboard offers an unparalleled creative canvas.
HTML
Developer
But an already uneasy alliance of ideas and numbers could be
jeopardised by technological leaps such as programmatic
trading. Marketers must consider integrating both creative and
Art
Director
Copywriter
Design
Lead
analytics functions in order to scale both relevance and
empathy simultaneously.
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Perform for dynamic audiences

For Magicians
Conjure thousands of creative variants
instantly that already know how to perform
For Logicians
Develop production-ready HTML creatives
that run on any billboard using familiar tools
and libraries.
Build advanced creatives in-house
without an external production agency
Integrate with Google Sheets
security and collaboration built in
Work with common libraries
jQuery, GreenSock and more supported out of the
box for rapid development
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Perform for dynamic audiences

Final Takeaways

How to start scaling relevance
How to get started?
Right message, right time has always been the goal for marketers.
The current global climate has only accelerated the need to put
these goals into actions. We’ve outlined how through three steps:
Take your performance agenda into the real world
1. Establish a real-world data foundation. The
problem with data is accurately identifying high
quality sources.
An expert team – we help our partners mine their
data to make every interaction relevant and begin
learning from the real world.
2. Build relevance into every performance. There is
an appropriate model for every billboard
performance - brand or performance.
A global platform used by marketers to build the
optimisation models powering the world’s most
sophisticated billboard campaigns.
3. Treat data & creativity equally. A new approach
to billboards requires alignment of logicians and
magicians.
A content development toolkit for multiple
discipline teams to aid experimentation and
balance data with creativity.
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Perform for dynamic audiences

About Flux
Flux is the technology partner for marketers
who want to perform for dynamic audiences.
Flux’s expertise and experience lies in consumer behaviour, data
science and software engineering. We help marketers use data
and machine learning to scale their relevance agenda into the
real-world.
Contact Us
hello@fluxoutdoor.com
Plexal Innovation Centre, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park,
Here East, London, UK E20 3BS
References:
[1] Harvard Business Review, 2018, Stop focusing on Loyalty, source
[2] Salesforce, 2017, State of the Connected Customer, source.
[3] McKinsey, 2019, The future of personalisation, source.
[4] VIOOH, 2019, State of the Nation Report, source
[5] Empirical Economics, Forecasting market moves with searches, source
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Perform for dynamic audiences