White Paper Preview: Should You Run More YouTube Ads or Buy Billboards in Your Markets?

In today’s fragmented media environment, marketers are under growing pressure to justify every dollar spent. And they’re often turning to performance marketing metrics like ROAS and last-click attribution to guide decisions. However, Jeremy Flynn’s white paper challenges the prevailing bias toward digital platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, urging marketers to reassess the role of Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising as a powerful, measurable, and performance-driven media channel.

Flynn makes a compelling case: the overemphasis on digital advertising, driven by its quantifiability, is leading brands toward marketing uniformity and diminishing returns. While platforms inside the "walled gardens" excel at short-term engagement, they often fail to contribute meaningfully to long-term brand building. The result? Brands risk fading into commodified obscurity. In contrast, OOH not only enhances brand awareness but also plays a pivotal role in driving measurable performance outcomes across the entire marketing funnel.

The paper highlights that OOH should no longer be considered merely a brand-building tool. But as a channel that bridges the gap between branding and performance. Drawing from emerging research and real-world case studies, 

Flynn presents compelling evidence: OOH outperforms Connected TV and digital media in driving key metrics like purchase intent, brand favorability and ad awareness. Notably, a Kochava study reveals that OOH campaigns sustain performance longer than digital mobile ads, which tend to burn out within hours. OOH, by contrast, drives consumer action over days and even weeks.

Flynn emphasizes the role of frequency and location diversity in OOH’s success. Repetition, once considered a weakness in traditional media, proves to be an asset in OOH. High-frequency exposure in varied locations not only boosts recall but also leads to higher app installs, foot traffic and online orders. Examples from categories like consumer-packaged goods and tech reinforce the argument that OOH drives real-world behavior more effectively than many online platforms.

Moreover, as digital ad effectiveness stagnates and fraud concerns rise, OOH offers an un-skippable, fraud-free and cost-efficient alternative. Its ability to target audiences at scale, in context-rich real-world environments, and to complement digital strategies, makes it a critical component of the modern marketing mix.

In summary, Flynn’s white paper is a timely call to action. It urges marketers to rebalance their media investments, moving beyond a myopic focus on digital performance metrics to embrace a more integrated and effective media mix. In this new era of marketing, OOH is not just a tactical consideration, it’s a strategic imperative.