Posterscope has launched ECOS NOW, a proprietary OOH trading platform which enables the planning, purchase and activation of digital OOH in near real time, subject to defined operational and performance criteria.
ECOS NOW will allow advertisers to purchase their optimal campaign solution but only when it is going to perform the most strongly, based on the specific data that will have most impact. For example, a drinks brand, where sales are heavily correlated with the weather, will now be able to only spend when its optimal weather conditions are met, or a food retailer reacting to promote an abundance of perishable goods or simply reacting to an increase of target audience in a specific location. This approach truly leverages the inherent agility and flexibility that digital OOH has the potential to offer.
From a technical perspective the key difference between ECOS NOW and other automated routes to market, such as a DSP, is the way that it connects to media owner systems. ECOS NOW uses the IAB Open Direct protocol rather than Open RTB, used by all other systems. In practice this means the transaction is wholly centred on what the advertiser wants to buy, rather than what the media owner wishes to sell.
This way media plans can be fully described by all of the important planning parameters that a traditional manually bought plan would be; specific location, weight, time and audience etc, which is contrary to the DSP approach, which generally excludes all but impressions and time.
The decisioning engine for ECOS NOW is Posterscope’s proprietary ECOS DMP, which comprises over 30 location data sets, but can also ingest any external data set with a location component, including first party client data. For example, OOH activation could be triggered by a client’s real-time sales data, CRM or stock availability.
Glen Wilson, Managing Director of Posterscope, says: “In considering our ‘programmatic’ OOH offer we were adamant that it had to deliver truly distinct client benefit with that being to fully unlock the potential of digital out of home; namely to enable advertisers to deliver the right message, at the right time, to the right audience but uniquely when recognised optimal conditions were met. In ECOS NOW we believe we have a game-changing solution which will become increasingly important, particularly as people’s movement and behaviour is less consistent post lockdown.”
