Proving Out of Home Works:
Insights from Waves 1 & 2
of OOHMAA’s 24-Month Study 

WHAT DOES ‘GOOD’ OUT OF HOME LOOK LIKE? 

It’s a question we hear time and time again from advertisers and agencies looking to understand the real impact of their Out of Home campaigns. While Out of Home is well known for building mass reach and brand impact, in today’s data-driven marketing world, brands want more than just impressions; they want proof. They need to know if their campaigns are working, why, and how to optimise them. 

That’s why OOHMAA has launched a 24-month research study, moving beyond perceptions to provide real, data-backed insights into how Out of Home delivers results. This isn’t just about proving effectiveness; it’s about defining what success looks like, what works and why. By tracking real campaigns over multiple waves, we aim to equip advertisers with a clear roadmap for maximising brand impact through Out of Home. 

WHY THIS STUDY MATTERS

With budgets under pressure and growing scrutiny on media performance, this research goes beyond perception to provide category-level evidence of Out of Home’s impact. Drawing on the Drive framework, we’re measuring awareness, consideration, brand perception, and behavioural response to understand Out of Home’s role in brand-building and conversion.

 Each wave comprises four campaigns across a range of sectors and formats, enabling diverse, anonymised case studies. The first wave covered grocery, FMCG, QSR, and telco. The second wave added campaigns from travel, QSR, Beverages, and Telco. Together, these eight campaigns start to reveal patterns brands can act on.

ABOUT THE STUDY 

Every two months, up to five Out of Home campaigns are selected across different categories, formats, and objectives. Some operate as stand-alone Out of Home campaigns, while others are part of a broader media mix. This allows us to explore different strategies and provide advertisers with practical case studies.

For objectivity, all campaigns remain anonymous. Instead, they are categorised using a range of filters, ensuring insights focus on strategic learnings rather than specific creative or campaign executions. The first two waves, conducted in Q4 2024 and Q2 2025, examined campaigns from grocery, FMCG, QSR, and telco brands, using both digital and classic formats. The goal is to track performance while identifying patterns and best practices that brands and agencies can apply.

What we are measuring 

The study will share findings over the course of 24 months on: 

  • Total campaign recall and brand attribution to understand visibility and recognition. 

  • Creative effectiveness, including attention, engagement, and emotional response. 

  • Brand impact, covering awareness, positivity, relevance, purchase intent, and purchase behaviour. 

  • Out of Home campaign elements, such as format mix, media weight, time in market, and geographic spread. 

  • Other media channels used will allow us to examine how Out of Home interacts with other media channels, assessing the optimal mix and investment levels to maximise ROI, enhance brand impact, and uncover the media multiplier effect, ensuring advertisers can make data-driven decisions for more effective campaigns. 

Over time, these data points will be compiled into a rich dataset, building industry-wide benchmarks that help advertisers optimise their Out of Home campaigns. 

WAVE 1 & 2 LEARNINGS: EARLY TRENDS EMERGING 

While it’s still early days, and hard to share specifics without longitudinal data, some interesting insights have already surfaced from the first wave: 

1. The Power of Consistency 

Campaigns using long-established brand codes performed strongly in recall and brand attribution. In contrast, a bold, creatively striking campaign that introduced new brand codes struggled to drive immediate brand recognition—suggesting that audiences take time to connect new visual identities with a brand. Meanwhile, a more traditional execution, though creatively simple, delivered strong results. 

Recommendation: Stick to recognisable brand codes for fast brand recognition in Out of Home. If evolving them, accept that it takes time— more than one campaign is required to see results. 

2. Balancing Brand & Promotional Messaging 

In this wave, brand messaging received a lower share of total campaign spend, with a heavier focus on price and deals—likely due to the study running in the Q4 retail period. Despite this, brand-led creatives still performed well, reinforcing the importance of long-term brand investment alongside short-term sales activations. 

Recommendation: Don’t neglect brand-building, even during peak retail periods. Maintaining a strong brand foundation ensures that future retail campaigns start from a higher base, amplifying their impact. This is the Long and Short of it in action—it’s not about choosing between the two but leveraging both for sustained success. 

3. Emotional Engagement Drives Results 

Emotion matters in Out of Home. This study showed that emotional engagement correlates directly with consideration—an important indicator of future sales. However, if a campaign is emotive but poorly branded, those positive gains don’t translate to the brand. 

Recommendation: Ask yourself: Does this creative spark a strong emotion? Whether it’s excitement, warmth, or even surprise, emotional campaigns are memorable. But make sure those emotions link back to the brand. 

4. Clarity Drives Results

Dull creative is forgettable, but overly esoteric work risks confusing audiences and losing them altogether. The real craft lies in creating work that’s both creative and instantly clear, engaging, memorable, and easy to absorb in a moment. That’s what experienced creative teams do best: they develop ideas that are creatively powerful, strategically sound, and simple enough to connect quickly with an audience, without losing impact. Think of The Economist’s campaigns, clever, sharp, and accessible. They’re smart without being obscure, and that clarity is exactly what makes their message stick.

Across both waves, there is a strong correlation between how easy a message is to understand and how likely someone is to consider the brand.

Recommendation: Keep messaging short, sharp, and instantly understandable. In an environment where the average viewing time is around 2 seconds, clarity is critical for driving outcomes.

WAVE 1 TRENDS REINFORCED

The Wave 1 findings still hold strong as additional campaigns are added:

Consistency matters: Ads using established brand codes perform better in recall and attribution.

Brand and promotional messaging can coexist: Even in retail-heavy periods, brand-focused campaigns showed long-term value.

Emotion correlates with consideration: Campaigns that emotionally engage audiences see higher intent, but branding must be clear to link the emotion back to the advertiser.

WHAT’S NEXT? 

As we continue through this 24-month journey, the growing dataset will allow OOHMAA to provide meaningful benchmarks for campaign effectiveness, creative guidance, and strategic media planning. Already, with just eight campaigns, the signals are clear: attention and creativity matter, but clarity is what converts.

Stay tuned as we move into future waves, uncovering more about what ‘good’ Out of Home really looks like, and how advertisers can use these insights to drive better outcomes.