A public service announcement about out-of-home

Every media plan has a blind spot.

It is usually the part someone told you the platform could not do. Wrong market, wrong format, wrong buying method, too small, too fast, too far away. Check the mirror again.

Scroll down. Bring your outcome.

FORMATS IN MIRROR ARE MORE AVAILABLE THAN THEY APPEAR
Blind spot The mural in Shoreditch, the airport takeover in Austin, and the four day conference buy that starts Tuesday.

Blind spot no. 1

Programmatic or direct is not the question.

It is the argument the industry keeps having because it is easier than the real one. Programmatic is a way to buy. Direct is a way to buy. Neither one is a strategy, and choosing a team before you choose an outcome is how you end up with a plan that is beautifully optimized for the wrong thing.

Go ahead. Pick a side.

Programmatic Direct
Most platforms make you choose here. That is the blind spot, not the answer.

Blind spot no. 2

Start with the outcome. Everything else is downstream.

Format, market, buying method, flight length, measurement. None of those are decisions yet. They are consequences of one decision you have not made out loud. Pick the outcome and watch the plan assemble itself.

Blind spot no. 3

You cannot plan 360 degrees through a keyhole.

If you have to leave the platform to do the next part of the plan, it was never a plan. It was a channel. One place to see everything, buy everything, and measure it against the outcome you named at the start.

The fix

If you cannot measure the outcome, you never picked one.

Impressions are not an outcome. Plays are not an outcome. They are receipts. Useful ones, but nobody sets a quarterly target on receipts. Name the outcome first, build the plan to serve it, then measure the thing you named.

01

Name the outcome

Visits, pipeline, installs, lift, applications. One sentence, with a number in it, before anyone opens a map.

02

Build to the outcome

Formats, markets, and buying method get chosen because they serve the number. Not because of what is easy to book.

03

Measure the outcome

Holdouts set before launch, attribution wired on day one, and a read you can take to the person who approved the budget.