Dan Larden, Head of UK at TPA Digital, says he coined the term fixed point programmatic for buying placements that never move in real time and may be seen by multiple people.
Larden says the hardest hurdle when Infectious Media launched programmatic digital out-of-home with John Lewis was the client's budget sign-off, not the technology.
Larden argues in-house advertisers are an untapped opportunity for programmatic out-of-home because they control their own buying and avoid agency politics, so they can test quickly.
Why screens that never move may win back ad budgets
Dan Larden argues that programmatic digital out-of-home deserves its own category, which he calls fixed point programmatic, meaning real-time buying of screens that never move and reach more than one person. As privacy rules and technology changes erode identifiers and location data, placements whose location and audience are known become more valuable for targeting and measurement. The operational barriers that once slowed the channel have largely fallen away.
Takeaways
Fixed point programmatic names a new category. Larden coined the term because nothing else described buying, in real time and programmatically, a placement that never moves and may be seen by more than one person. Connected TV and digital radio are bought in a similar way.
Out-of-home was first to offer shared placements. Earlier programmatic display and video ads were typically seen by one person at most. Desktops stayed put, but laptops and phones move, and that is where social is bought. Out-of-home screens stay fixed and serve groups of viewers.
Signal loss favours placements with known audiences. Legislation and technology changes make measuring programmatic display and YouTube harder, and the VPN built into the latest Google Pixel obscures user location. Multitouch attribution has almost died with identifiers, so Larden expects advertisers to shift money toward out-of-home.
Fixed screens enable clean uplift measurement. Each screen can be checked on Google Maps, so brands know it exists and where it sits. Larden calls running uplift studies on fixed placements, such as checking whether sales rose in a store near the ads, a huge untapped opportunity.
Launching campaigns now takes about a week. Five years ago, set-up, creative and optimisation were uncertain, and integrating data into the bid stream delayed campaigns. A recent TPA Digital test with the host needed a week or less for creative tracking including the build, and campaign data was easy to obtain.
Early resistance came from clients, not technology. When Infectious Media, an agency with its own DSP, entered the channel around 2018, out-of-home publishers eager for demand were easiest to convince. The first campaign, with John Lewis, was slowed mainly by budget sign-off inside the client.
Where brands should start testing
The right approach depends on how a brand is set up, but Larden recommends moving part of TV and out-of-home budgets into programmatic.
In-house advertisers are the largest untapped opportunity. They already run search, social and often programmatic themselves and control their own digital buying.
Tap a name to go there · tap a line to see why they are linked
On this episode 2
Show 1
Without agency politics, in-house teams can test and learn quickly. Many aspire to use programmatic digital out-of-home but do not realise how easy it has become.
Agencies' established processes can make them static and block test and learn.
Brands working with agencies should educate themselves on what they are missing and push for testing through honest conversations about how much budget can go into programmatic next year.