How Programmatic OOH Is Driving Growth for American Airlines

Last week Raj Lala, Vice President of US Sales & Development at Vistar Media, hosted an eye-opening panel at the Brand Innovators Media Buying Summit on how brand, agency and platform teams can best collaborate to create winning campaigns that extend beyond consumer devices.

 The panelists included: 

• Marty Peat, Senior Manager of Global Media & Alliance Marketing at American Airlines
• Morgan Collins, Associate Media Director at EssenceMediacom
• Adrian Witter, Director of Programmatic and Partnerships at Kinetic

This discussion delivered an in-depth look at American Airlines’ approach to driving significant brand differentiation and loyalty lift by scaling programmatic digital out-of-home, with EssenceMediacom, Kinetic and Vistar, as a core media channel.

You can watch the full video here: How Programmatic OOH Is Driving Growth for American Airlines.

To recap, here are our top five key takeaways: 

1. OOH technology has made tremendous strides over the years.

• “I think a lot of people don't realize how far it [DOOH] has really come. The data capabilities, the measurement, the targeting as well as buying. Now you don't only need to buy on a local geo level, but now you can also buy programmatic out-of-home on a national level.” – Morgan Collins
  
  
• “The fact that programmatic out-of-home can now truly catch that DCO [dynamic creative] functionality is one of the things that excites me about where the future lies.” – Adrian Witter
  
  
• “We’re excited to see how this year's investment goes because the tracking capabilities and ability to demonstrate what it [DOOH] delivers is only going to continue to improve.” – Marty Peat
  
  

2. Integrating DOOH into the larger marketing mix boosts the performance of other channels.

• “Out-of-home has largely sat as a silo and what we're trying to do now is integrate it into the wider digital mix so that it can play alongside those channels and ultimately showcase its synergistic effects at driving performance across search, social and amongst others.” – Adrian Witter
  
  
• “80 percent of people who have seen an [OOH] ad – that's how they find out about a product, then they search via a search engine or social media, so it really has that longevity of driving users down the funnel.” – Morgan Collins
  
  
• “When we think about it [OOH] as an awareness-driving medium, we definitely see the uplift in search, so there is some correlation through the media mix modeling that we have in place — but also long-term brand growth isn't going to come from short-term tactics.” –  Marty Peat
  
  

3. Brands must bridge the gap between creative and planning.

• “70 percent of an ad’s effectiveness is based on the creative, and I think we owe it as media channels, publishers and media teams to give those insights back to our creative counterparts.” – Marty Peat
  
  
• “Whether it's Marty and his team, Kinetic and even Vistar, we work across a variety of different partners and communication has let us all be on the same page.” – Morgan Collins
  
  
• “As partners, we have to be nimble and have our solution work for the team.” – Raj Lala
  
  
• “In some cases, we need to be very bold and very purposeful with the messaging that we put out, and then when it comes to some of the other formats, the contextual relevance can really catapult the performance into the stratosphere” – Adrian Witter
  
  

4. OOH is becoming a true driver of brand loyalty. 

• “We know to drive loyalty, to drive long-term brand preference, we have to market, promote and continue to communicate.” – Marty Peat
   
• “We've been tasked with shifting away from lower funnel conversion tactics that we were heavily invested in during the Pandemic. And now we've taken the opportunity to shift away from that and really meet the consumers where demand is and where we've seen in the category that it needs to grow, which is loyalty.” – Morgan Collins
  
  
• “We added digital out-of-home onto the plan last year because it was an opportunity not only to reach our [current] members but also to remind everybody that had the credit card in their pocket to use it and to take advantage of that moment to use it. And we've seen some really strong results come out of that.” – Marty Peat
  
  

5. Measurement is (and will continue to be) critical to future campaigns.

• “Our structure has been focused around performance marketing, and I love seeing some of the other teams and clients talk about growth marketing because I think that's ultimately the shift.” – Marty Peat
  
  
• “Whether it's the [credit card] sign-ups, or whether it's app download, there are a variety of different metrics that are largely underutilized when it comes to capturing out-of-home performance that we are innovating with the team to surface.” – Adrian Witter
  
  
• “We're not just going to be testing on that upper funnel. We're always going to be looking at that bigger picture, but everything has to be proven by results.” – Morgan Collins
  
  
• “We're looking at the time of day impressions were served and then the number of people in certain markets that have a co-branded credit card and what happens to their spending habits.” – Marty Peat
  
  

This is just a taste of the insights this panel provided. If you’d like to learn more, you can watch the full recording here: 

How Programmatic OOH Is Driving Growth for American Airlines