Out-of-home advertising a.k.a outdoor advertising is made up with more than 100 different advertising formats that reach the consumer out of home. Billboards, Posters, Sticker Graphics, building vinyl are all examples of such formats.

With technology moving forward and improved large format digital displays availability, advertisers are shifting from traditional print and paper methods and are focusing on digital advertisements with moving images, sounds and interactive features.

In reference to an article in The Economist, use of digital billboards and posters will double over the next five years, where as in Pakistan LEDs LCDs panels have already taken advertisers eye on them. The rise of digital in out-of-home advertising, brand managers and business owners are starting to think about the opportunities social media provides as part of their out-of-home advertising digital strategy.

The business owners and brand managers in Pakistan are still not convinced with the heavy spending on digital out of home advertising but with the rise in the social media users and Smartphones. Pakistan’s largest out of home Agency Kinetic’s CEO says they are ready for this change already.

What does 2014 have in store? The digital team at Opus Communication (Digital Media Agency in Pakistan); give their views on the challenges and the opportunities that 2014 may bring in Pakistan.

Content for people, not for the sake of it

There are many brands creating lots of content at the moment. Unfortunately, whilst some of that is amazing, mind-blowing, shareable content, a disappointing amount of it is just content that exists for no other reason other than to try and get links. Brands really need to stop doing that in 2014. Brands will need to focus even more of their efforts on creating content for the consumer, rather than filling quotas for the number of articles or info graphics that they have to get out every month.

Responsive design to Responsive content

We’ve seen responsive web design and social web sites in 2013; we’ll see a natural progression to responsive content in 2014. I expect to see a greater use of device sensors and server side scripts to deliver entirely different content sets depending on a user’s individual session.

Geo-location and Wi-Fi networks provide a very real opportunity for brands to really enhance their customer offering. For High Street brands, this could allow them to deliver store-specific content that really enhances the customer experience. Similarly, transport operators could use this technology to deliver content in a quick and succinct way to passengers on the move.

With smart TVs now working their way into more and more homes, expect to see a considerable growth in content for internet enabled TVs in Pakistan.

Following users offline and across devices

Google is now measuring the attribution of PPC activity on other channels by users who are signed into their Google accounts across multiple devices. This combines your last click sales in AdWords with a number attributed to PPC activity decided upon by Google.

This will help advertisers and agencies realize the true value that each device is having on their campaign and ensure that the customer journey is heavily optimized and relevant.”

The growth of brands

We’ve seen brands show their human side in 2013. Consumers and even agencies, sometimes forget that brands are human too. However, it is important to show the human side of brands wherever we can. People don’t respond to a faceless, corporate machine. They respond to a human voice that is fallible, prone to minor mistakes, and forgivable.

An explosion of search retargeting providers

I expect more providers to offer these retargeting services in 2014 and we will see more advertisers utilizing this technology in order to grow brand and product interest in order to help attribute their traditional search offerings specifically in Pakistan.

SEO Role

The SEO community has been talking about interaction metrics such as bounce rates and time on site for some time but now we’re starting to see signs that Google is taking these measures seriously. We can now see a clear correlation between the average time spent on site and the ultimate ranking position of that site. That means that the days of SEO sitting separate from the rest of the business are now over. Now, SEO will have to consider other factors such as proposition, user experience and technical efficiencies which may in the past have been deemed the domain of entirely separate business units.

With more people around the world getting online every day, social and digital marketing is becoming even more powerful. Social media in particular is playing rising role in digital achievement of any product and campaign. Platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and LinkedIn have evolved from local networks to global channels. Tapped into correctly, they can offer a return on investment unthinkable even a few years back.

But together with this potential, exists the undercurrent of artificial content that degrades the worth of online channels, imposing barriers for sustained success. Off shore reviews, timeline content or even worse, fake friends and followers are some good examples.

Have you ever felt while reading an online review that it was staged? Or, did you ever feel that there is a sudden though odd increase in support for a product campaign online? Sometimes it might even have made you wonder that a certain brand had a surprising number of followers. This case looks even more obvious when you find that the page for that particular product, service or campaign has insignificant number of comments while they have unbelievable number of likes or followers (A good rule of thumb is 0.5 – 1% of a real fan base comment).

This exercise has been recently observed in Facebook and Twitter where we can see an incredible swell in the number of followers in an unbelievably short span of time. Now the question is, is there any value in these low cost techniques? The answer is yes, but with a considerable warning. If you are not incredibly confident about the inherent value and potential dangers of illegitimate followers, it can have a long-termed detrimental effect on your business. You even need to be aware of the onshore providers outsourcing your work for incredible mark-ups. In the end, nothing beats well earned and real supporters, who will be engaged by your online strategy and become positive advocates of your brand reputation.

There are no short-cuts to your online brand management, social media popularity and content strategy, as such. But done right, you can create consistent new online channels to promote your brand. Here are our top five tips to achieve this goal:

(1) Content Strategy Plan:

Plan out the content strategy for your product and/or service at least 6 months in advance. Make sure that you stay true to your brand values and developing online character. Incorporate a good mixture of campaigns, discussion, competitions, advertising and affiliate forums. It is always good to know where your visitors are so that you can customize your products to local regions.

(2) Brand Relation:

Interested followers are the ones you have relationships with. If everyone else is talking about a particular event, add a creative, on-brand pitch on the topic, or simply post about something else. Think of your brand online as a person with a consistent character with a touch of energy. It can mature in time but the personality shouldn’t jump around.

(3) Your audience:

Not just online, but at restaurants, offices, shops, organizations etc. Social media is all about transparent brand recognition so listen and respond to both the positive and negative opportunities. Don’t just monitor the social channels you have a content strategy for, search consistently or purchase a cost effective software tool to help monitor in near-to-real time, to hear thoughts of your brand transversely, over all online platforms. Transparency is a possible key to success here.

(4) Extra mile:

More and more people are getting socially good. Stories that inspire often have similarities to old-world service. Go the extra mile and truly connect with your customers. You will convert followers to advocates and constantly build a positive brand reputation in market.

(5) Genuine:

Buying fake followers or fake reviews will not benefit your brand for long term now. People are becoming more and more aware of fake stories, reviews and profiles. If it is too good to be true, it often is. Be genuine all the time. Then the clarity you provide to your audience and your analytics will be real and extremely good, measurable as your channel grows bankable or in good shape.

It is obvious that social platforms are worried about their revenue a lot more than mitigating grey and black hat content. However, we will also see platforms become more responsible and close the gap for our very human need for transparency. For example, Facebook is rolling out Graph Search now, which will bring another level of clarity to ‘real’ endorsements in our work.