From brand awareness, to reach, traffic, lead generation, and conversions, many businesses run their ads a little haphazardly. Who can blame them—the advertising world is far from simple. Many lean on Meta’s how-to guides but often end up with lackluster results, blaming good ol’ Zuck while their ad spend remains unoptimized.
For those new here, Blip was built around the premise that all advertisers should have access to the same platforms. Billboards, with the lowest CPM, are an excellent way to build brand awareness, which is essential for long-term growth. With an ability to stop, start, and spend when it counts, digital billboards offer low-risk, high-reward opportunities for companies that recognize the importance of playing the long game.
However, that isn’t to say that OOH should be your only play. Successful marketing begins by using the right mediums at the right time. By placing more emphasis on your top-of-funnel strategies and understanding the pros and cons of both OOH and digital, you’ll be better equipped to utilize various channels when they matter most.
Below, we dive into how OOH and digital campaigns stack up at the brand awareness level so you can execute a fully optimized campaign.
Purpose of a Brand Awareness Ad
Understanding the intent behind exposure and frequency is crucial for leveraging a broader market, aligning with customer desires, and enhancing brand loyalty.
Digital Ads
Brand awareness campaigns on Facebook and Google are designed to maximize visibility and help people recognize your brand. These ads focus on impressions and ad recall lift, measuring how well your audience remembers seeing your brand. While they don’t drive immediate sales, repeat exposure builds the foundation for future engagement and conversions.
Digital Billboards
Though similar to digital ads, digital billboards offer a unique chance to boost brand recognition by creating viral, shareable moments. While it provides a sense of authority, OOH also carries a broad appeal that sparks conversations and leaves a lasting impression on customers when they least expect it.
Metrics to Consider in Brand Awareness Advertising
Focusing on the metrics that will push you toward sales, won’t drive immediate revenue but will lay the groundwork for long-term customer engagement and conversions.
Digital Ads
- Impressions: The total number of times your ad is displayed, whether clicked or not. It helps you measure the exposure your brand is getting.
- Reach: The number of unique users who have seen your ad at least once. Unlike impressions, reach counts each user only once, helping you gauge how many individuals are aware of your brand.
- CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions): This metric shows the cost for every 1,000 impressions, helping you evaluate the efficiency of your brand awareness efforts. The average CPM for digital ads typically ranges from $5 to $15, depending on the industry and targeting strategies.
- Audience Demographics: Data that provides details about your audience’s demographics, behaviors, and interests, helping refine targeting strategies and understand who is engaging with your brand.
Digital Billboards
- Impressions: The total number of times a billboard ad is displayed to an audience. It reflects the potential visibility of your ad.
- QI (Qualified Impressions): This metric refers to impressions from the target audience most likely to engage or convert. By leveraging geofencing data, you can track how often repeat customers see your ad. Data shows that after 6-7 impressions, consumers typically recognize your brand, making them ideal candidates for retargeting through social media, email campaigns, and targeted ads.
- CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions): This metric indicates the cost for every 1,000 impressions on digital billboards, essential for assessing the effectiveness of your ad spend. The average CPM for digital billboards typically ranges from $3 to $10, depending on factors like location and time of day.
- Audience Insights (Geofencing): Geofencing uses GPS or mobile data to track audience demographics, behaviors, and location patterns within a defined area around a billboard. This data helps advertisers understand who is seeing their ad, tailoring future campaigns to target the most relevant audience and improving ad effectiveness.
ROI & Timing of a Brand Awareness Campaign
Timelines will vary significantly depending on factors like industry and market conditions, but most businesses begin to notice tangible results within 3 to 6 months after launching brand awareness campaigns.
Digital Ads
Results hinge on how well you guide potential customers through the funnel. Brand awareness campaigns typically boost brand recall by 20-30% within three months. Once established, you can shift to targeted campaigns, often achieving conversion rates of 2-5%. Tangible ROI is usually seen within 6 to 12 months.
Digital Billboards
After 6-7 views or qualified impressions, consumers start to recognize and engage with retargeting ads leading to conversions. Using the industry standard in geofencing data, billboard advertisers can measure audience insights, foot traffic, engagement to their website, and more. The conversion process typically happens over multiple ad spends, usually within 4-6 cycles.
Closing
Every ad has its place, but one fact stands out: leading brands leverage out-of-home (OOH) advertising for brand awareness. OOH captures attention unexpectedly and offers the lowest CPM for reaching a broader audience.
With Blip, you can easily sign up, upload your creative, set a budget, and see your billboard live the same day. We recognize that we live in a digital world—digital ads are essential partners in your customer journey. Stay tuned as we explore how you can use tools like digital billboards to cast a wider net before leveraging highly targeted mediums like email and social media to drive conversions.
Ready to discover what Blip can do for you? Sign up and start your campaign today!
