IPG's Rapport Integrates With OOH DSP, Fuels Both Digital And Static Growth

One of Madison Avenue’s holy grails has long been the quest to align the right message with the right consumer in the right place and at the right time, especially for dynamic, real-time media like digital, TV, radio, etc., but thanks to a partnership between IPG Mediabrands’ Rapport unit and digital out-of-home DSP (demand-side platform) Quotient, it could be on its way to being fulfilled in one of the industry’s most static medium: out-of-home.

The deal integrates Rapport’s planning and buying systems directly into Quotient’s platform, enabling the agency’s clients to utilize their own data -- including first-party data gathered about their own customers -- directly into Quotient’s programmatic media-buying system so they can, in fact, serve the right message to the right person on the right screen and at exactly the right time.

While the integration doesn’t actually enable Rapport to dynamically change ad messages in real-time on the out-of-home media industry vast supply of static billboards, it does enable the agency to at least plan and measure the impact of targeting consumers on them, and as Rapport President Chris Olsen notes, “digital has grown dramatically and programmatic is the fastest-growing part of that.”

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Currently, Olsen estimates about 30% of all out-of-home advertising inventory is digital and that about “9-10%” of that currently is bought programmatically by the agency, but it has been accelerating.

He estimates programmatic’s share of digital out-of-home media buys will growth 90% this year, 50% in 2023 and 40% in 2024. 

“The switch has certainly flipped in the past year-and-a-half,” he says. 

As much as its new deal with Quotient will help fuel Rapport’s programmatic growth, giving the agency access to digital inventory from virtually every SSP (sell-side platform) currently offering it programmatically -- some 360,000-plus screens nationwide -- Olsen says the deal is equally important in terms of giving Rapport clients insights about reaching “high value audiences” across their total out-of-home media mix. 

“It’s not just scoring against digital [ad] units,” he explains, adding: “We can use that perspective for any static screen, as well. It’s why we’re so enamored with this partnership.” 

Asked how those insights might impact the share of ad budgets going to both digital and static out-of-home, Olsen acknowledged that while digital is expanding more rapidly, static will also benefit from better “end-to-end” planning and that the effect will be a greater share of ad spending to the out-of-home overall.

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