Hivestack and our Digital Out of Home expert Drew Renwick periodically work together to find ways of quantifying the value of Digital Out of Home campaigns. They recently completed a study with all of Regina’s Houston Pizza locations. The question the study hoped to answer was “how much additional foot traffic can a DOOH campaign create for a business?”
Spero Milios of Houston Pizza had this to say: “My partners at Houston Pizza and I all shared the goal of increasing foot traffic into our restaurants. Nia from Directwest suggested that their network of digital billboards in Regina could accomplish that goal. Together we built a campaign that would reach consumers throughout the city. The results were carefully tracked using new technology from Directwest.
The Methodology
First, a cool and statistically sound methodology was developed:
Build an Audience
Step 1. Build geofences around Houston Pizza’s locations (5 locations were included).
Step 2. Geofence the DOOH screens used in the campaign (23 screens were used).
Step 3. Schedule the ads when Houston Pizza’s target audience is most likely to be driving by the billboards.
Run the Campaign
Step 4. Launch the DOOH campaign (the campaign ran throughout February).
Create the Lift Study
Step 5. Measure mobile device IDs observed at the selected stores.
Step 6. Measure mobile device IDs observed at DOOH screens.
Step 7. Place those IDs into one of two buckets – control and exposed groups.
• The control group consists of consumers who passed a DOOH screen when the ad was NOT playing but still went to Houston Pizza.
• The exposed group is consumers who DID see the DOOH ad and then visited Houston Pizza.
Step 8. Quantify the difference that the DOOH ad made to consumer behaviour.
The Results
According to Mr. Milios, “We were able to see that the digital billboard messages made customers 5X more likely to stop at one or more of our locations. The end result was over 2 million impressions and additional revenue. Nia’s recommendations and the proof of value she presented proved our time and effort were well placed.”
Houston Pizza benefited greatly from their February DOOH campaign:
- There were over 5X as many consumers in the exposed group. In other words, consumers who saw the Houston Pizza DOOH ad were 5X more likely to stop there!
- 291 incremental walk-ins were generated in a single, short month.
- These walk-ins resulted in an estimated $14,500 in incremental revenue.
- ROI for the campaign is estimated to be $3.60 to $1.00.
- Over 2 million impressions were delivered.
On the map below, the blue arrows show the increase in foot traffic experienced by each Houston Pizza location. Green arrows represent Directwest billboards and the increase in traffic based on ad exposure followed by a visit to a Houston Pizza location.
These studies require a great deal of co-operation between Directwest, Hivestack and the customer. Thank you to everyone who was involved!
