AdAge: Inside TikTok's Out-Of-Home Marketing Approach as it Expands Further Beyond Mobile
THE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM HAS PARTNERED WITH SEVERAL DIGITAL MEDIA NETWORKS, INCLUDING GSTV, REDBOX AND REACHTV AS PART OF A LARGER PUSH INTO DIGITAL OUT-OF-HOME
By Gillian Follett. Published on August 08, 2023.
TikTok identified nearly 2 billion digital-out-of-home screens around the globe that the platform could run its videos on, including gas station TVs and Redbox kiosks.
Credit: GSTV; Redbox
Since its inception, TikTok’s identity and viewership have been intertwined with a mobile-first experience. But the platform is now seeking to transcend phone screens and evolve into a ubiquitous element of the digital out-of-home landscape, too.
In the past four months, TikTok has inked deals with several OOH video networks to bring the platform’s content to a variety of additional screens including airport TVs, gas pump screens and, most recently, the video screens atop Redbox’s movie rental kiosks.
TikTok’s push into the realm of digital OOH is the platform’s latest initiative to extend the reach of both its user-generated videos and paid ads beyond just social media. It’s an effort TikTok has pursued for roughly the past year through deals with connected TV platforms, streaming services such as Vevo and movie theater screens through a partnership with Screenvision.
“We’re leaning into digital out-of-home because we feel the content showcased on TikTok shouldn’t necessarily just belong on TikTok,” said Dan Page, head of global distribution for TikTok’s so-called New Screens team, which since 2021 has worked to distribute TikTok videos across “as many screens as possible outside of mobile.”
“Yes, our platform is the place to consume content through your For You page. That is important,” he told Ad Age. “However, we also recognize there are 2 billion additional screens outside of mobile, and these are the screens that should feature the content that we have—the education content, the book content, the food content. You should be able to have that experience wherever you are.”
TikTok worked with tech consultancy firm Omida to identify those estimated 2 billion global screens, which include digital OOH displays, screens within vehicles and cinema screens, according to a TikTok spokesperson.
Bringing TikTok videos to noisy locations such as airports, gas stations and grocery stores has required the platform to curate a continually updated library of video content that can be appreciated and understood without sound. On mobile, audio is a crucial element of TikTok content, with users and marketers alike often incorporating trending songs and other audio clips into their videos in hopes of achieving greater reach. In fact, in 2021, TikTok commissioned a study from Kantar which found 88% of TikTok users consider sound “essential to the TikTok experience.”
Gas stations and grocery stores
Page and the New Screens team are regularly picking out and licensing video content “meant to be viewed without sound, which includes art, sports, practical jokes” and other “lighthearted content that’s supposed to amuse you,” he said. TikTok gives attribution to creators whose videos are included in that content library, he added. Marketers, too, can capitalize on TikTok’s out-of-home expansion by extending their paid ads created for a mobile TikTok experience to these new digital out-of-home mediums, Page said.
For Sean McCaffrey, president and CEO of gas station video network GSTV, which announced its partnership with TikTok in June, marketers bringing their TikTok-optimized video content to new digital mediums helps brands remain at the forefront of consumers’ minds as they go about their day instead of solely while they’re scrolling through social media. He likens this broadening of TikTok consumption to a modern form of sequential messaging, where marketers can bring their ads designed to engage younger, digital-native consumers to screens they encounter closer to the point of sale in retailers such as convenience stores.
“We, as consumers, now live very fluid lives between the so-called digital and physical worlds,” McCaffrey said. “A lot of our brand partners—our client base is automotive, financial services, entertainment, QSR and a few other things—are using TikTok. And we think the partnership with TikTok is an opportunity for those brands to extend those campaigns to a real, larger audience.
“I think sometimes, as media strategists, we get a little too hung up on things like, ‘What is this called? Where does it fit in the budget?’” he continued. “Versus, as a consumer, if something is a relevant product to me, hitting me with it a few times in a few different places is going to be valuable.”
GSTV distributes video content on roughly 30,000 gas pump screens across the country, and the network will incorporate both user-generated and branded TikTok videos into its daily rotation of content, McCaffrey said. By bringing its videos to GSTV’s 116 million monthly viewers, TikTok is essentially evolving into a “broadcast viewership network as much as it is a digital platform,” he said.
Darren Olive, president of Crackle Connex—the advertising platform for Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, Redbox’s parent company—echoes McCaffrey’s sentiment about TikTok videos’ unique ability to capture and influence consumers’ attention. Many of Redbox's 3,000 video rental kiosks that are topped with a TV screen are positioned just behind the checkout area in grocery retailers such as Albertsons, he said. Consumers waiting in line to purchase their groceries thus become a captive audience for a CPG brand’s ad or a video demonstrating a recipe using a given product that they could then be incentivized to go back into the store to buy, he said. Similarly, the ads they view while waiting in line could drive their purchases after they leave the grocery store, he said.
“For us, it's all about capturing attention within three or four minutes,” Olive said. “And if you think about what is effective in doing that, I don’t think there’s a brand out there that’s better at grabbing someone’s attention within a limited amount of time than TikTok, whether it’s content endemic to the products and services sold inside the store, or what their next consumer journey is going to be, like going to gas up or picking up dinner at a QSR.”
Millions of consumers walk past the video screens on Redbox's rental kiosks each month, according to Crackle Connex chief revenue officer Philippe Guelton.
Credit: Redbox
Crackle Connex has also seen significant growth in the digital OOH business in recent years, said Philippe Guelton, the company’s chief revenue officer. And it isn't aren’t alone. According to a March report from the Out of Home Advertising Association of America, digital OOH advertising soared by 24% in 2022 after also growing at a double-digit rate in 2021. The report cited digital OOH as a “key driver” for OOH advertising revenue as a whole, which also includes revenue from non-digital outdoor ads such as billboards, bus ads and wall murals, among other formats. OOH revenue jumped over 20% to $8.6 billion in 2022, per the organization's report.
Extending influencers’ reach
Along with bringing brands’ ads to a wider variety of digital screens, TikTok also views its pivot to digital OOH as a way for its creators to “showcase their content off-platform,” Page said. But TikTok is just one company pursuing the effort to bring creators’ content to new screens and leverage their growing influence.
Adomni, which owns over 700,000 digital screens in 30 countries, teamed up with influencer marketing platform Influential in June to extend creators’ videos to new mediums including digital billboards and shopping mall screens. With this partnership, Jonathan Gudai, founder and CEO of Adomni, and Influential CEO Ryan Detert are especially interested in enabling brands to bring videos featuring influencers talking about a given product or their experience with a brand—content that already has a significant impact on consumers’ purchases—to the physical world.
“We saw an opportunity where there's these massive, nine-figure budgets that exist for brands, but they’re bifurcated between social media and DOOH,” Detert said. “They really should be connected together, because wherever the audience lives is where advertising should be.”
Like GSTV’s McCaffrey, Detert and Gudai pointed out how having creators’ social media content follow consumers beyond their phone screens to locations such as billboards, point-of-scale screens or gym TVs can contribute to a sequential messaging strategy. If a consumer is viewing creators’ product or brand recommendations in short, consistent bursts throughout their day, they’re more likely to “shorten the purchase cycle” and click on the link to buy that product when they see similar creator recommendations in their social media feeds.
“It’s about a one-two-three combo—the little screens and big screens all interplaying,” Gudai said. “By the time you’re home at night and watching TikTok or scrolling on Instagram, you’re going to be more likely to click on that ad, because you’ve been exposed to either that exact same piece of content or something similar out in the real world.”
LaLiga North America expands US reach with GSTV content deal
via SportBusiness
US-based national video network GSTV has signed a content deal with LaLiga North America, through which it will show short-form content from the top tier of Spanish football.
LaLiga will begin offering exclusive highlights clips for GSTV from this week and the deal has been signed ahead of the start of the new season on September 12.
LaLiga becomes the first professional football league to offer content on GSTV, which also provides National Football League and Major League Baseball coverage.
GSTV reaches 92 million unique viewers a month.
Boris Gartner, chief executive of LaLiga North America, said: “We want to deliver LaLiga content to our fans wherever they are and partnering with GSTV adds yet another touchpoint with our US audience as we build on that strategy. We are excited to bring the action of the best soccer league in the world to one in three American adults across the country.”
LaLiga North America is a joint venture between LaLiga and Relevent Sports Group, and serves as the exclusive representation of the competition in the US and Canada for all business and development activities.
In June, LaLiga North America teamed up with global sportsbook operator PointsBet to create a new slate of gambling-focused digital programming to coincide with the league’s return to action.
Martech Zone: GSTV: Target Consumers at the Pump with Location-Based Video Experiences
By: Douglass Karr | Martech Zone
Every day, millions of Americans get in their vehicles and go. Fueling up drives commutes, commerce, and connection; and that’s when GSTV has their undivided attention.
Daily, at tens of thousands of locations, their national video network owns a unique moment that matters, when consumers are engaged, receptive, spending more today and influenced for tomorrow and beyond. In fact, GSTV reaches 1 in 3 American adults monthly, engaging viewers with full sight, sound, and motion video at an essential waypoint on their consumer journey.
GSTV Overview
Case studies of GSTV include social engagement, retail sales lift, increasing ad effectiveness, store and dealership visitation, lift in consumer spending, building viewer awareness and tune-in, and lifts in website visitation.
GSTV Short Form Video Example
Chances are that you’ve seen and responded to these short form videos that drive a call-to-action. Here’s a great example for retail establishments to get someone who is pumping gas to walk into the store and make a purchase:
GSTV Reach
GSTV engages adults with hundreds of millions of individual 1-to-1 interactions to entertain, inform, connect, and deliver a moment that moves today and matters tomorrow. Benefits of their target audiences include:
Spending – A young, active, affluent audience, who spends +1.7x more following a fuel transaction
Real People – A Nielsen audited network, with no bots, no fraud and no DVRing
Brand Safe – Premium content curated for a general audience
Engagement – Traveling, dining, listening, shopping, spending, and more while engaging at a pause point in their journey
Capabilities through GSTV’s 95 million unique visitors includes the ability to target first party audiences based on their demographic, geographic, and behavioral data.
GSTV helps marketers achieve quantifiable business results and maximize their ad spend. GSTV has delivered double-digit increases in retail visitation, millions of dollars in sales lift, and significant increases in brand metrics for some of the world’s largest advertisers.
GSTV Extends Content with Loop Media
Loop Media, a streaming media company focused exclusively on premium short-form video, announced a content partnership with GSTV to produce and share short-form music videos, top new music videos, movie trailers for new releases, and top movie trailer compilations.
This short form streaming content provides opportunities for brands and marketers to effectively target consumers outside the home.
For Brands Seeking True Attention, Perceptions of DOOH and Place-Based Must Change
By: Sean McCaffrey, President and CEO, GSTV | via OAAA
We’re in the thick of IAB’s NewFronts week, when brands tune in to presentations from Snap, TikTok, YouTube, Roku, GSTV, and others. Presenting alongside notable digital and video platforms, OTT and CTV newcomers, and others across the media and entertainment landscape, how does a platform like ours — rooted in legacy “placed-based” association, yet boasting video partner-like capabilities — fit in?
Historically, it wouldn’t. Part of our reason for being here is to continue shifting the narrative around what that means, because for us and others, it has evolved dramatically and demands a closer look. There is significant opportunity for brands seeking real attention and engagement and the ability to reach consumers at scale to deliver meaningful business outcomes.
Media buyers are tearing up playbooks and focusing on proving to clients that their investment drove sales lift and ROI, creating massive opportunity for DOOH publishers to change perceptions and refocus marketers’ thinking on what true scale, attention and impact can mean. Why? Because efficiency and impact are more important than ever to earn a place in media strategies.
We need to move beyond screens and towards obsessing over audiences, behaviors and impact — and how DOOH has a valuable place in media plans to deliver on those outcomes.
The OOH industry classically prioritizes the physical nature of billboards and screens — geographic location; proximity to destinations; display and resolution; one-to-many audience ratios — context and cost. Location is important, however, marketers miss a bigger POV by not investing in DOOH. The DOOH industry has rapidly evolved from static environments into dynamic, engaging, attributable video platforms with similar, and sometimes larger, audience scale and measurable returns than other household name video publishers.
Consider how DOOH platforms fit consumers’ state of mind, the place in their journeys before and after as behavior shifts, and how we connect, amplify and impact the entire comms planning strategy and media mix.
Video buyers are aware that DOOH platforms have become dynamic and share traits of traditional video platforms they love, but perceptions are hard to change. In a recent OAAA Lunch Break, Essence Global Chief Media Officer Adam Gerber shared that while both watching a show on the couch or scrolling through the phone and seeing a billboard are valuable from the POV of agencies and marketers, those experiences aren’t equally weighed.
What differentiates them is the notion of attention. While TV and walled gardens may be the de facto buy for premium experiences and captive environments, what marketers forget is consumers are screen surfing and likely to see both while not paying attention to either.
We hear this regularly from buyers new to GSTV who are surprised to learn that we are more than our 24,000 locations, and more than just video: Our platform engages a captive audience surrounded by important purchase decisions, during a moment when consumer attention and engagement is at the forefront.
The renewed interest in DOOH, and its rapidly evolving definition, has opened the window for companies like ours and others to make these points clear. We should embrace disruption and seize opportunities to accelerate the pace of change. “Place-based” is an oversimplified idea that fails to capture the depth and evolution of DOOH, and reconsidering the DOOH opportunity for consumer attention, engagement and action are in the best interest of every ROI-focused brand.