Maximizing Elevator Advertising Impact with Precision Targeting Strategies

With every new campaign, your agency is tasked with building an effective media plan that delivers your compelling narrative to a specific audience. You understand the brands’ objectives, the interests and values of their intended audience, and the importance of refining targeting parameters across multiple media channels. If too many channels you’re tracking are hitting just shy of their mark, maybe it’s time to consider expanding your reach with elevator advertising.

In luxury residential communities and prime office buildings nationwide, the modern display screens installed in elevators and high-traffic common areas are so popular with affluent tenants that they’re considered a high-value amenity. 

When you partner with the right media partner to make these screens a part of your advertising strategy, it provides your brand with an efficient, cost-effective media channel capable of influencing the purchasing decisions of corporate decision-makers, business professionals, and high-earning working parents. 

Once you know why advertisers are adding elevator screens to their media mix, you’ll also want to consider how precision targeting strategies could maximize their impact.  

Why Agencies Are Adding Elevator Advertising to Their Media Strategies

You know firsthand how hyper-specific digital ad placement can get. The precision of your targeting capabilities across multiple media channels helps minimize wasteful spending to ensure the brands you represent achieve a favorable return on their investment. When you’re casting a wide net, lackluster performance in one channel is easily offset by the success of another.

When the stars align in your favor, your clients reap the rewards. But even with market analysts anticipating an 8% spending increase through 2024, it’s woefully apparent that “older” digital advertising methods are less effective than they once were. Recent polls suggest 70-80% of consumers scroll past sponsored search results, and only four out of every 100 impressions get more than a single second of viewer attention. Advertisers are reaching their targets, but not when their audiences have time (or the desire) to pay attention.

Related: From TV to Elevator Screens: A Compelling Shift for Advertisers

Digital isn’t the only channel straining under the weight of dwindling attention spans. Television audiences are fragmented across multiple streaming services and connected TV (CTV) is losing its edge to siloed inventories, walled gardens, and ad-free subscription services. 

While there are multiple digital out-of-home screen locations capable of reaching the elusive demographics currently evading the targeting capabilities of the media channels you’ve relied on for years, elevator advertising with the right network partner has the most to offer.  

How The Right Elevator Advertising Brings Attention and Value to Your Brands

Elevators are a quiet, uncluttered, distraction-free environment where people wait in close proximity. There’s relatively little to focus on as passengers come and go. Conventional elevator etiquette dictates that riders wait for transport in an orderly manner. As the doors open, personal conversations stop, and eye contact is minimal. 

With the lack of personal space, the absence of acceptable social interaction, and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers in awkward silence, the time people spend traveling between floors can feel like an eternity, particularly for riders who loathe feeling confined.

In close quarters where conversation is discouraged and stress levels may even tend to rise, the display screens installed in elevators are a welcome diversion. Riders appreciate how easily the technology cuts through the tension. 

With the length of most elevator rides clocking in somewhere between 30 seconds and two minutes—and tenants crossing the threshold an average of four times per day—this previously underutilized space is generating considerable attention from advertisers and their clients, but the screens must be optimized to attract and retain viewer attention.

Not all companies leveraging the ability to display ad creatives via elevator advertising have the resources to make that happen. Many display a disjointed collection of generic RSS feeds or lackluster playlists. 

The media network providers influencing the purchasing decisions of some of today’s most elusive demographics bring a lot more than screens to the table. As you’re contemplating the advantages of utilizing this previously untapped space, consider how two key, in-demand features add value for your agency and the brands you represent.

Expertly Curated Programming from Reputable Sources

The screens most likely to deliver a healthy ROI will display your ad creative alongside an expertly curated programming mix. The quality of the programming broadcast combined with elevator advertising isn’t something advertisers have the luxury of leaving to chance. 

According to data compiled by NBC Universal, ad creatives need to hold viewer attention for a minimum of 2.5 seconds to leave a lasting impression. Multiple studies confirm that ad creatives optimized to hold viewer attention are three times more effective for building brand awareness than those that are not.

The best media network providers hold viewer attention by pairing brand creatives with expertly curated content. They help agencies leverage partnerships with reputable content providers, adding value to elevator screens via a bite-sized programming mix featuring reliable national, global, and entertainment news, business reports, lifestyle tips, weather updates, and more—content that captive audiences appreciate and enjoy watching. 

A Contextually Relevant, Brand-Safe Digital Environment

Maximizing the impact of viewer engagement requires contextually relevant placement decisions. It’s essential that engaging programming and your ad creatives complement each other based on the interests of your audience and their environment. 

For example, displaying leisure travel ads alongside travel tips in residential communities can help viewers maximize the relevance of the brand’s message. Aligning ad creative promoting fitness club membership with Live Healthy content builds a deeper connection and is more likely to impact behavior. Contextual relevance dramatically improves the overall quality of the user experience while also elevating brand perception.

Media networks focused on partnering with brands to build contextually relevant campaigns are also playing a crucial role in ensuring brand safety. When you’re supported by an editorial staff working across multiple time zones, you won’t have to worry about unintentional associations or potentially problematic programming reflecting negatively on the brands that trust your expertise for placement decisions.

How Agencies Leverage Precision Targeting to Optimize Their Strategies

The digital out-of-home (DOOH) market is so popular with advertisers that market analysts anticipate a CAGR of more than 18% through 2030. When you invest in elevator screen advertising, you’re delivering 100% viewable impressions against a valuable, captive audience where and when they have time to engage.

But when you’re tasked with boosting brand recognition, generating leads, and driving sales, you have to keep waste to a minimum and ensure your campaign is effectively targeting. 

You need assurances that your ad creatives are being broadcast ONLY in the buildings that have the highest chance of reaching your target audience. For that, you need a media network partner that invests in agency success by providing data-driven tools you can rely on, including the following examples.

Flexible, Data-Driven Targeting Capabilities

Agencies embracing the virtues of contextual relevance must also have access to data-driven insights to fine-tune plans that target the highest quality venues that over-index for their target audience with as little waste as possible. 

The best partners will have data-driven targeting tools from reputable sources that you can trust to provide accurate data to guide your plans. In addition to the performance-optimizing potential of programmatic ad placement, you can gain the ability to choose screen locations based on socioeconomic rankings, job titles, median income, geographic region, and other key demographics while also fine-tuning your strategy with dayparting and specific ad triggers.

Collaboration Services

As you’re comparing DOOH venue locations, network size, and access to data-driven insights, take a moment to also consider any additional partnership benefits you would have at your disposal. Some of the most impactful elevator ads leverage collaboration services for customized brand alignments. Some of those alignments are also prompted by geolocation data, weather triggers, day of the week, time of day, and other precise targeting parameters.

The ability to increase viewer engagement with gamification and the ability to embed ad creatives with QR codes are also a plus for advertisers. It’s a simple feature that encourages audience interaction by providing immediate access to real-time product information, special offers, contests, surveys, and live agents. Industry leaders predict that more than 100 million smartphone users will be scanning QR codes by 2025.

Content Alignment & Effectiveness Studies

Custom content alignment boosts brand relevance and targeting effectiveness by merging the most useful or entertaining content with ad creatives. It’s the type of collaboration you’ll often see pairing financial services ads with business/investing-related content, beverage companies with drink recipes, and B2B products with business reports and management tips created by reputable, recognizable sources. 

With the right service provider, you’ll have everything you need to track and monitor overall ad performance, fine-tune your targeting parameters, and calculate the return on your investment. Some companies also offer the option of investing in campaign effectiveness studies to evaluate audience perceptions, brand tracking for insight into market positions, A/B creative testing, and test control studies to analyze uplift, services that further enhance future precision.

Maximize ROI with the Combined Impact of Elevator Screens and Precise Targeting

For agencies looking for a creative, cost-effective way to diversify their media strategy, elevator advertising could be ideal. It’s one of the only media channels capable of delivering a captive audience. You’re essentially purchasing the attention of viewers with considerable discretionary income willing to pay more for products and services that align with their values and make their lives easier or more enjoyable. To learn more, visit Captivate to see our screens in action.   

Captivate is an industry-leading media network with one of the largest digital screen footprints in the US and Canada. You’ll find Captivate-powered screens in the elevators, lobbies, and high-traffic common areas of premium office buildings and luxury residential communities across 37 active markets. When you’re ready to get started, submit a contact form. After 25 years devoted to capturing viewer attention with our expertly curated content, no other media network provider has more high-value screen locations and audience reach.