They understand how to tell a story, how to communicate reasons to buy succinctly, and how quickly people consume content. They've built their businesses around having their finger on the pulse, and creating work that can keep up with the fast-moving digital world.

The problem, though, is that the feed is getting harder to win. With the algorithmic goalposts constantly moving, even an exceptionally well thought-through post can disappear quicker than you can swipe a thumb. And — given the sheer volume of content being published every second of every day — brands that compete in the social realm find themselves facing a daily battle to retain eyeballs, before they move on… or glaze over. 

But what if the content didn’t have to stay there?

I think there is a much bigger opportunity for social media agencies to start looking at digital out of home (DOOH) as an extension of the campaigns they are already creating. And I am not talking about a separate OOH campaign that needs to be handed over to someone else. Rather, I mean another screen for the same idea.

In other words, take great social content, and boost it into the real world.

Why the Real World Matters

We know that digital campaigns can work harder when OOH is added to the media mix. Kantar research into media effectiveness has shown the value of combining digital and offline channels, while a more recent APAC analysis found that combining TikTok with OOH delivered 38% incremental reach and improved cost efficiency by 29%.

Moreover, Kantar's research consistently shows that consumers are highly receptive to advertising in physical environments, with OOH ranked as the most preferred advertising channel in South Africa.

I think that last point is becoming more relevant, as it offers social agencies an interesting opportunity: adding OOH doesn't simply extend the reach of digital content; it puts that content into an environment consumers already view more positively. There is a lot online now that people are not entirely sure they can trust, and the rise of AI-generated content is exacerbating this uncertainty. It is becoming harder to know what is genuine and, in some cases, whether there is even a real person behind what you are seeing.

Outdoor media has a physical presence that is difficult to replicate. When a social campaign suddenly appears on a screen in the real world, it feels bigger because it is bigger. The audience is no longer limited to the people a platform has chosen to serve it to.

For social agencies, the interesting part is that programmatic DOOH is making this far easier to do than it once was. OOH has traditionally been associated with long booking periods and large budgets, and while that model does have its place, it is not the only way to use the medium anymore.

Take for instance a social campaign, which might only need DOOH for a week as an added layer to a primarily online campaign. If an influencer is promoting a cosmetics brand, for example, that content could be shared on digital screens in a mall where the target customer is likely to be, at a fraction of the budget of what a longer, big brand campaign across a national outdoor media network might cost. 

The content can move quickly too. For example, through Polygon's aggregated DOOH network, a campaign can go live within a matter of hours, offering social media agencies the same agility in the real world that their brands expect in the social world.

This starts to look very different from the traditional idea of buying a billboard.

Bringing a Social Expression to the Real World

We have already seen what can happen when content moves easily between digital and physical environments. One beautiful example of the power of a social-led DOOH execution is Polygon's recent collaboration with Rimmel for its 'Beauty in Real Time' campaign. Consumers had photographs taken as part of an activation and those images were then flighted onto digital screens in the mall almost immediately.

Seeing yourself appear on a billboard became part of the experience, which could then be shared back into social media. This demonstrated that content created for one environment can have a much bigger life when it moves into another.

This provides an exciting commercial opportunity for social agencies as well. Many already work with clients that instinctively spend their marketing budgets online and would never have considered DOOH because they assume it is too expensive or complicated. But the agency already has the client relationship. It already understands the audience and is creating the content. Incorporating DOOH into the rate card is therefore not an enormous leap. Nor does the agency need to become an OOH specialist to do it — it simply needs the right partner to make the process easier.

Social agencies are already creating the content and designing the campaign — digital out of home media simply gives that work somewhere else to go.

For more information, visit www.polygon.technology. You can also follow Polygon on X.

*Image courtesy of contributor