Face-to-face with consumers

MANILA, Philippines - As we drive along EDSA or any other street in the metro, different colorful buses barrage us —with movie, bank, restaurant, and mall posters glued to its outside—hoping to succeed in one objective: reach consumers while they are outside their homes.

These skillfully designed buses are called bus ads—one of the many forms of out-of-home advertising that is being practiced by many advertisers and marketing specialists today to hit the public with their specific message.  

As defined in the website of Business Exchange (bx.businessweek.com), Out-of-Home Advertising is any advertising that reaches the consumer outside of the house.

This form of advertising remains to be a strong out-of-home advertising medium in the country—according to a quantitative survey completed in January 2003 by FB Consumer Research Services Inc.—a roster member of the local marketing and Opinion Research Society (MORES).

One local company that provides this type of advertising is OOH Incorporated—the country’s first and only B2B Portal in the Out-of-Home advertising industry. OOH Inc.—a member of Outdoor Advertising Association of the Philippines (OAAP) and the Advertising Board of the Philippines (ADBOARD)—is into branded and high-performance value-added outdoor advertising.

A one-stop shop solution for busy advertisers, OOH Inc. focuses on three core brands.

First, its outdoor exchange—an online mall where advertisers can shop for the “best buy” in billboards through its ‘billboard locator’ in www.ooh.com.ph, where an advertiser can just type in the city, landmark, street or town of its desired billboard space. Full access to the site is, however, limited only to approved members.

Having more than 2,000 billboard inventories nationwide, outdoor exchange uses highly-sophisticated and “state-of-the-art” software technologies used today by major Internet merchants worldwide.

OOH—as the “first and only Out-of-Home Consolidator in the country”— uses the Internet as means of effectively reaching its market, time-wise and cost-wise, which are proffered to the advertiser in terms of lower rental rates.

Its Bus Ads, as another core brand, are advertisements on buses. To boot, OOH also does jeepney, taxi, banner, and lightboxes as part of its out-of-home ads.

This outdoor advertising is equipped with a scientific and systematic approach that maximizes consumer eyeballs, hitting the right target market at the right place and at the right time.

Lastly, for its Roving Villboards, OOH utilizes a patented V-type roving billboard technology that increases visibility and displays exposure in a three-dimensional manner.

Remarkably, a well-planned outdoor ad can effectively capture the viewer’s attention 24 hours a day, giving the advertiser an edge over its competitors by being exposed to the right market and the right volume while creating an image of company uniqueness and stability.

And the “ultimate proof” of the importance of outdoor advertising is media itself, as noted by the OAAP.

“For even TV networks, radio stations and news publishers advertise on billboards and public utility vehicles.”