Buying out-of-home (OOH) advertising is a confusingly complicated process, even still in 2023, especially for those who have never done it before. We’ve gotten so accustomed to being able to purchase practically anything we want with ease both in-store and online, ranging from physical goods to services to experiences.
Even online advertising has gotten fairly easy to purchase with ease—from the comfort of your own home with nothing but a laptop or a smartphone, sites like Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube make it incredibly simple for just about anyone to purchase an ad or promote their content, regardless of number of followers or how big your brand is.
So why is OOH such a doozy to secure? It can be confusing for beginners (see: this Reddit thread in which a user was struggling to understand even the basics of the industry), but also for professionals in any industry who are just trying to reserve some ad space. This sense of mystery is largely because of the lack of accessibility in the industry.
Save for the “big guys” who have managed to stick their foot in the door and/or partner with an experienced advertising agency to help them out, securing ad space is often super complicated—in a lot of cases, you can’t just go online and check out without doing any sort of work with another person or company.
It helps if you know someone with connections, or maybe have been around the ol’ advertising block, but even just having some previous advertising experience isn’t enough. When buying an ad campaign, you might have had inventory sold out from under you after you thought you had it reserved, or you might be expected to pay additional fees you weren’t expecting, or you might even just struggle to get a response.
Plus, there’s the lingo—every industry has it, but the OOH industry really has it. From knowing the difference between ad formats to understanding basic advertising terms (like CPM or impressions), the industry has a tendency to be not-so beginner-friendly.
However, as the OOH industry continues to grow and progress, it’s becoming more accessible to first-time buyers and small businesses. Sites like BillboardsIn, for example, provide a beginner-friendly space with easy-to-understand terminology, user-friendly mechanics, and even a simple online checkout process.
The OOH space is continuing to make progress in becoming a more accessible industry, and as the years continue to go by, we can experience first-hand the steps that industry professionals continue to take towards making it a more inclusive space.
