Truck Side Advertising Enables Businesses To Target Their Customers
Truck side advertising: learn more about this mobile OOH concept.
The Impact of COVID-19 on the mobile OOH industry
As the economic impact of COVID-19 continues to unfold, brands and agencies need to re-image their advertising methods. The out-of-home (OOH) advertising players will need to rethink their strategies before the damage deteriorates to them bleeding clients too. Traditional billboards will not be effective anymore as the consumers will be taking a more careful approach and spend more time in their homes. So fewer people will be outside and less impressions will be generated by outdoors advertising. Traditional OOH will be replaced by in-home advertising.
According to a survey conducted by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) it is believed that traditional out-of-home advertising is expected to suffer (Forbes) an estimated ad spend decline of 51% for March and April and a decline of 41% for May and June.
Adzze has been re-thinking the advertising tactics adapting to a more sensitive message. The team has working on extending its capabilities to offer advertising concepts that can reach the consumers at their safest place: at home. One of these methods uses pizza boxes as advertising space. Think of this as small moving billboard that gets delivered at the consumer’s home. Studies demonstrated that this type of ads can evoke an 80% recall rate (8 out of 10 households individuals remember to see an ad on the pizza box) with an average ROI of 150%. This means, for every 1 dollar the advertiser invested in a pizza box advertising campaign, they received at least additional 2.5 dollars of sales. For more details, see the article Estimating the ROI of Pizza Box Marketing.
Trucking is still a lucrative venture in the US. The sector employs over 3.5 million Americans, most of them male. According to the American Trucking Associations (ATA), there are about 36 million registered trucks excluding government and farm trucks. As such, there is a massive opportunity for truck side advertising. It reaches deeper into the target audience versus traditional media.
What is truck side advertising?
Trucks pull long trailers that contain millions of tons transported on American roads every year. Delivery trucks, in particular, have broadsides that offer an excellent space for placing ads. The space at the side of the delivery trucks is sufficient to place large-format ads that are highly visible to the target audience. As the trucks crisscross the country, many people become familiar with the brands emblazoned on their sides.
Truck side advertising is similar to mobile billboards advertising. Advertisers wrap the billboards around the visible sides of the truck for maximum exposure. Delivery trucks reach closer to the target audience as they ferry goods. Often, the delivery trucks terminate at the point of purchase. As such, customers at that point have an opportunity to interact with the brand. Further, delivery trucks are huge such that the message sits atop the traffic on highways. It affords the billboards enough exposure to drive high conversion rates.
Advertising vehicles will no longer be effective
Recently the Interactive Advertising Bureau surveyed nearly 400 media buyers and brands. The results were surprising: 74% think the coronavirus pandemic will have a larger impact on their advertising spend than the 2008 financial crisis. According to the President of Interactive Advertising Bureau, David Cohen, “Typically marketers will press pause for a moment, take a breath, assess the situation, replay and reevaluate.”
The use of mobile OOH methods will most likely experience more decline in the coming months, given the fact when the economy re-opens, people will still be cautious and stay more at home. Mobile advertising using trucks, buses and others will be fast replaced by in-home advertising. The impact of COVID-19 has kept normally mobile citizens inside their homes. Hence, the best ways to reach your audience and maintain brand visibility will be to take your products and services to them indoors, as it will be clearly unprofitable to place adverts on advertising vehicles that no one is seeing.
Truck Advertising: pitfalls
There are millions of delivery trucks on American roads every day. As of December 2019, Amazon had 20,000 delivery trucks. Other companies like FedEx, U-Haul, and UPS have thousands of vehicles in their delivery fleet. All the trucks are branded such that wherever they go, they increase the awareness of the brand they represent. Having multiple trucks enables the brand to reach as many potential customers as possible.
Say, for example, that your business acquires and brands a delivery truck. For every delivery that the truck makes, people from new parts get to interact with the brand. Further, the delivery trucks enable businesses to target the exact audience with the message. This ability for precise targeting is critical to increasing conversion rates.
Another positive about truck side advertising is that there is no definite overage period. The banner is removable and reusable whenever the advertiser deems fit. Further, the size of the banner is only limited by the size of the truck. For a straight truck, the typical space for the banner ranges from 16’ to 26’ L x 7’ to 8’ H. On the other hand, the typical range for trailer vans is 28’ to 53’ L x ~8’ H.
Brands are looking for alternative to static traditional OOH advertising as vehicle advertising or digital mobile OOH. The use of ads on advertising trucks has been emerging as unconventional tactics however it has risks related to the impact on reputation. When the vehicle carries the advertisement of the brand on the road, the advertising truck serves as brand ambassador. Any driving misbehavior could impact directly the brand image. In addition, advertising trucks have several pitfalls as low return on the ad investment, difficult to track the outcomes and low brand recall. Advertising trucks cannot target precisely the exact audience as any traffic driver could be targeted. There are some parts of the country and others globally, with restrictions on billboards. As such, advertisers cannot access the areas during an ad campaign. In such a situation, truck side advertising is an ideal alternative. Notably, advertisers can attach different types and sizes of billboards on the side of trucks.
Even then, in-the-hand advertising proves to be the best in terms of cost, simplicity and effectiveness. To put this point in context, consider an advertiser who chooses to use hotel key cards as an advertising medium. First, the key cards enable the advertiser to achieve precise targeting of the audience. Oftentimes, hotel customers are the affluent who travel for business meetings and for leisure. Therefore, the advertiser will achieve precise targeting if he/she desired to reach affluent individuals. Secondly, advertisers can customize hotel key cards cheaply. All they require is to print a message and a business logo on the card and then deliver them to the preferred hotel.
Pizza Box Marketing will emerge as as In-Home delivery option
During this crisis marketers will have to adapt and to stay on top of the latest trends. Its critical to improve type of advertising message shifting it to more sensitive perspective. The business of marketing is changing in the age of COVID-19. Whether its effects are brief or prolonged, marketers need to be nimble in these challenging times, and pivot when needed while optimizing performance throughout the crisis.
A noticeable new normal in consumer behaviour is the increased demand for food delivery services. According to NPD, 48.5% of all restaurant spending was for off-premise orders in the past 12 months and this is expected to accelerate during the lockdown.
Adzze has been working with its clients to adapt to a more sensitive message. The team has been extending the capabilities to offer advertising options that can reach the consumers at their safest place: at home. One of these concepts uses pizza boxes as advertising space that gets delivered at the homes of the audience.
