Why OOH Media Owners need a more efficient way to manage Multiple Revenue Streams

By Location Media Xchange (LMX)

Modern Challenges Faced by OOH Media Owners

Unsurprisingly, Out-of-Home (OOH) media spending has bounced back as people have increased their time spent outside the home. A quick glance at public venues in Malaysia will confirm this. Bumper-to-bumper traffic is back. Shopping malls and eateries are crowded. Tourists have thronged back to Bukit Bintang and KLCC. Many of these locations are canvassed by outdoor media assets of different sizes and shapes.

The evolution of OOH media buying methods means that the inventory is now consumed in a variety of ways – especially for digital screens. This includes loop-based, event-based, audience-based, impression-based, and other types of campaigns. Maintaining up to minute availability information, understanding utilisation, and prioritising sales channels is just not scalable if done manually.

A lot of this demand is coming from automated systems with programmatic Digital OOH leading the way. In addition, there are also online marketplaces and proprietary specialist applications used to plan and buy OOH advertising.

The ideal “Revenue Management” solution for OOH media owners needs to span across multiple sales channels – direct brand relationships, agency-managed spending, programmatic or automated media buys, and even online campaign bookings.

The same solution should be seamlessly integrated into the technology that is managing the implementation of the campaigns – for example, the Content Management System.

Digitally Transforming OOH Media’s Business Processes

According to Mandakini Negi, Co-Founder of Moving walls & Global Head of Location Media Xchange (LMX), “It is difficult to improve what you cannot measure. OOH media today is bought and sold in several ways and media owners who have a handle on inventory utilisation and demand trends across all their media sites in real-time will be able to make decisions that improve their revenues.”

LMX, the supply-side technology arm of the Moving Walls Group, says that efficiently allocating inventory is critical because, unlike digital publishers who own virtual space, OOH media owners own physical assets that consume fixed costs like electricity, internet fees and maintenance.

The company recently launched the first end-to-end Revenue Management suite for OOH media owners. The online software brings every facet of the OOH selling process onto a single online platform from inventory management and bookings to programmatic sales and audience measurement.

There are already more than 200 media owners across the world using parts of the software to address different challenges.

Why Do Media Owners Need to Switch to an All-in-One Revenue Management

For digital signage, the content management system (CMS) is the heart that keeps it functioning, says Victor Wong, Founder and Managing Director, LEDtronics (Malaysia). Today’s DOOH ad serving requirements go way beyond just scheduling creatives. There are creative rules, verification, and programmatic integrations involved too. The LMX CMS fits the bill as it is already natively connected to the deal acceptance, creative approval, and inventory management features of the platform.”

According to Gautam Bhirani, Managing Director, Eyetalk Media Ventures (India), “Our network of screens spans across multiple locations. Just as the content on these screens is managed centrally, we require a system to understand live availability, build proposals, and accept campaign requests in an automated manner. The LMX suite does all of this from one application.”

Similarly, FC Media (Morocco) uses LMX to provide measurement for their residential screen network “Accountable media channels build trust and therefore attract more spending. As the media owner, no one should know more about our sites’ performance than we do. LMX Measure enables us to provide campaign forecast and delivery metrics beyond just the ad plays,” says Saad Bencharef, Directeur du Patrimoine at FC Communication.

Meanwhile, Eddie Song, Managing Director, Laguna De Bay (Malaysia) says that Integrating DOOH screens into the programmatic ecosystem is just the first step. “Just like digital, we need to make sure our inventory is visible and accessible to multiple demand partners. LMX Connect provides our network with the ability to transact with omnichannel and specialist Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) locally and globally.”

Going Online to Manage Offline Media

OOH campaign executions have dramatically changed. Programmatic explains only one type of change – automated media buys – but there are other factors like the popularity of dynamic content serving based on external signals like weather, traffic, footfall, and so on. Just having media sites in perceived “good” locations is no longer enough. The media owner has to be able to attract and serve multiple demand requests.

The LMX Revenue management suite solves this by providing an online platform that connects traditional, programmatic, and other forms of campaign booking information in one place. The platform seamlessly connects to native and third-party applications like the content management system or the accounting system by the media owner.

LMX Revenue Management Platform enables a media owner to optimise media availability across multiple sales channels including traditional sales teams, programmatic, open direct and online self serve channels.

The new solution was launched at The World Out of Home Congress Toronto 2022, and media owners can sign up for a no-obligation 90-day trial to experience the platform.

To get in touch with the LMX team, please contact [email protected]

About LMX

Location Media Xchange (LMX), a newly formed company under the Moving Walls group, is the world’s first independent advertising technology company that is powered by a multi-sensor location media viewership measurement approach. LMX has been designed for Out of Home Media owners to digitalize their media inventory and offer it to brands and marketers who wish to reach moving audiences. LMX provides a platform for Media Owners to profile locations based on the types of audiences around there and activate mobile and physical place-based media like digital billboards to reach them during this offline.

This article was first published in MARKETING WEEKENDER Issue 334