There are myriad ways to drive fandom. Turns out in the attention economy of 2022, an old player in the marketing realm—out-of-home advertising—is generating new, bigger impact thanks to a parcel of new twists.
OOH ad revenue rose 16.7 percent in 2021 over the prior year, according to just-released data from the Out of Home Advertising Association of America. Ask anyone driving down Interstate 10 from LA to Indio for Coachella and Stagecoach this year, and they’re likely to paint an even rosier picture.
The roughly 50-mile stretch of highway is currently adorned with a dazzling palette of billboards with striking images and messages: “I’ll Be Performing Naked… Finneas.” “Louis the Child Is Two People.” “Psst… Looking for Utopia?” “Heterosexuality Can Be Cured… Just Watch Omar Apollo” among them.
Much of the temporary décor is courtesy of MilkMoney, which is providing content for 26 billboards during the three-week period this year, according to Sam Keywanfar, founder and CEO, who cites artists Billie Eilish, the Weeknd and Swedish House Mafia and brands including Kendall Jenner’s 818 Tequila, the Chainsmokers’ Jaja Tequila, Youth to the People, dating app HUD Gopuff and Calvin Klein among festival-focused clients.
“They are getting in front of hundreds of thousands of prominent influencers and celebrities. This is a core demo every brand is fighting for, 365 days of the year. Being able to position yourself in front of this coveted audience for three weekends is very rare and very significant,” he says.
The signs cost $15,000-$40,000, and business is up significantly from 2019—the last time the fests were held in person—when the company worked with artists and brands including Anderson .Paak, Bumble, Fletcher, Interscope Records, Lewis Capaldi and the Jonas Brothers.
“It has significantly grown in demand because advertisers have found that outdoor advertising’s not just great from a branding perspective, but also form a social re-sharing perspective,” Keywanfar says.
“A lot of brands are using it as a way to gameify the experience. Having Influencers go, take pictures in front of the asset, offering incentives like if people post it on their socials they have an opportunity to win something or unlock QR codes or some augmented reality to be able to get access to things other consumers don’t get.”
MilkMoney was behind the Travis Scott’s sky-high campaign at last year’s (pre-Astro World) Rolling Loud festival where a fleet of 250 drones formed a scannable QR code fans could photograph then use to get early access to Scott’s new single on Spotify.
And OOH’s potential to drive fans toward music artists is expanding. “In earlier years we were predominantly selling billboards to the record labels for artists, and predominantly for artists that were performing at the festival. Then record labels started using them to promote artists at the festival but also releases they have coming up. Then we started getting companies that want to promote tours and residencies, and other festivals and places where music artists will also be.”
So, too, is the out-of-home opportunity for brands. MilkMoney is bringing on more lifestyle, beauty, ecommerce and direct-to-consumer companies, and if there’s a celebrity attachment, those brands can get a hefty serving of earned media and publicity.
Coachella headliner Eilish’s billboard, for example, is shared with Adobe, with which she has a partnership. “They are pushing a creative that promotes the brand and her relationship with Adobe, and it’s targeting creators,” notes Keywanfar, who says MilkMoney made the deal with both the artist and the tech company.
MOOH: Out of Home and Into the Metaverse
These days, out of home also means out in the metaverse. MilkMoney recently coined the term MOOH to identify collaborations in virtual arenas, its first of which was in February when it delivered virtual billboards in Paris Hilton’s Paris World fashion week activation in Roblox for UK apparel brand Boohoo.
“Billboards are a part of our everyday lives and it should be no different in the metaverse,” Hilton said at the time of the launch. “When I spoke to Sam and the MilkMoney team, it was clear they shared the same vision for what Paris World can offer and how to reach consumers and fans, and it’s awesome to be launching our first billboard campaign with Boohoo, a brand I’ve always loved.”
“When the metaverse started to populate, we began to build out virtual boards and other assets within various plots of lands and started creating revenue for the landowners,” Keywanfar says.
Learnings from that presentation, for which MilkMoney activated four billboards at the entrance to Paris World, are telling. Tens of thousands of people entered and saw them, Keywanfar says, and average dwell time was more than seven minutes. “That’s a significant amount of time for people to see our billboards, whereas in real world people are seeing them for seconds,” he says.
Keywanfar is bullish on Web3 business in the coming years, and he has good reason to be. Digital OOH is leading the industry’s overall growth, according to the new OAAA report; the segment jumped 22.7 percent last year compared to 2020, with brands including Coca-Cola and Gucci staging immersive campaigns.
Other fashion houses are making moves. Last May Roblox hosted the Gucci Garden, a two-week art installation; Balenciaga linked with a game in Fortnite where players could purchase digital outfits inspired by real-life pieces from its virtual boutique; and Luis Vuitton released a mobile adventure game.
“Billboards will become interactive, and we’ve seen opportunities for people to buy an NFT through the billboard in the metaverse which is linked to both physical product they can get in the real world and also have things in their wallet,” he says. “Imagine seeing a billboard for a shoe and being able to buy that shoe as an NFT that goes on your avatar in the metaverse but you also get that physical shoe sent to you in the real world.”
Programmatic Play
As well as expanding its presence in Roblox, MilkMoney is working with creators in 3D virtual platform Decentraland, as well as with Hilton and others on new launches in VR world Sandbox. “We’re building out a network of screens across various metaverses,” Keywanfar says.
While direct buys account for the lion’s share of OOH spending today, programmatic purchases that foster more flexible campaigns are on the rise. Buying programmatically generally enables marketers to move ad budgets expediently among environments that attract their target audience without lag time or penalties.
“Eventually we’re going to allow our customers to buy programmatically,” Keywanfar says. “That way if someone says they want to target music fans we’ll be able to activate billboards around any concerts we have in the lands we are in and have our brands reach their fans across all those lands at once through a programmatic buy.”