ANYONE who had to negotiate peak-hour Sukhumvit Road traffic on Monday night would have realised the lunacy of Bangkok’s traffic. The gruesome two-and-a-half hour journey from my office at Empire Tower, Sathorn, to my home in Thonglor, took the notoriety
It was ridiculous and surpassed anything I have ever experienced before on the streets of Bangkok. So I was on Facebook naturally to kill time and to hear about my fellow friends’ disgruntlement on my feed. It was then that I stumbled upon a sponsored ad about the latest promotion at a locally run pizzeria. So I obliged.
Whether the operator of Gallery Pizza intended to promote itself on Facebook at this particular time (I saw the ad around 6.50pm) is unknown, but it worked wonders. I was lured to the promotion of two pizzas for Bt499. I hadn’t even been thinking about eating pizza that night up until then. But the ad reminded me of my hunger, as it was dinner-time. And low and behold, the delivery boy arrived at my condo way before I got back.
What happened?
A call-to-action campaign for a food and beverage outlet worked and the timing was right. Imagine if you could automate all your ads at a particular time when hunger typically sets in and your target group’s eyeballs are focused on the main platforms of choice, both offline or online. Just imagine what that would do to your sales. Programmatic buying just got better. Having originally been available on online platforms only, the technology can now be found on outdoor digital screens where automation plays an integral part in delivering clients’ ads on the right screens to the right targets.
Cadreon, a special ad-tech unit of IPG Mediabrands, recently announced a strategic partnership with VGI Global Media, one of Thailand’s largest out-of-home (OOH) digital media vendors, to provide what essentially is Thailand’s first-ever outdoor programmatic buying.
Traditionally, advertisers scattered their ads without actually knowing if they hit the target. Now, you can run ads conveniently at the tip of your fingertips through automated programmatic buying. This fundamentally means you have a better concoction of data and technology to best target consumers at particular times of day, and which targets are represented during particular periods of the day.
The example about ordering the pizzas is only one of many, showing how a moment’s planning can be seamlessly intertwined with integrated programmatic buying to bring about greater efficiencies and effectiveness – bombarding your ads across multiple screens to ensure there are no dead ends and the right target is hit, minimising any possible wastage in your ad spends.
VGI Global Media said spending on out-of-home media is expected to grow 20 per cent in the second half of this year due to the expansion of mass-transit lines and the rising number of digital screens in downtown Bangkok.
Cadreon will assist in identifying and reaching the right audience effectively, by leveraging multiple data partners and optimising campaigns on the fly using predetermined metrics that matters most. This in turn will help deliver insights that consistently increase performance and drive incremental growth.
Lastly, don’t think that a moment’s planning is limited to just food and beverages. A day in a consumer’s life involves many aspects beyond simply eating and drinking. There are multiple moments where brands can play a significant role in the lives of the modern urbanite. We’ve reached an era where estimations and wastage can be reduced significantly. But as advertisers, we must be willing to change and experiment with new methods.
Pradon Sirakovit is associate director, corporate communications, IPG Mediabrands Thailand; Email:[email protected]
