Out of Home is good. Retail Out of Home is Better.

How Cartology is building Australia’s largest and most effective retail out of home network for brands.

Research from Cartology and global data and analytics consulting firm, Analytic Partners reveals retail out of home - or ROOH - is doing a lot of the heavy lifting to drive ROI for brands, delivering 1.5x more effectiveness against total out of home. With a vested interest in retail out of home, and a network that’s growing at scale, Cartology’s Martin Wood demonstrates evidence of its success through third party research and client credentials. 

Out of home is good

Like me, out of home has been around forever. An original advertising format with its scale, presence and ability to always reach an audience all contributing to its success in outperforming market growth.

For advertisers, It goes beyond audience reach, as OOH is a great synergy driver. It improves the performance of other media channels and when combined with the likes of TV and digital, it only increases ROI for brands, when compared to those channels in isolation

Retail out of home is better 

Recently, I’ve thrown myself back into OOH, heading up our retail out of home agency team and I’m more excited about it than I have been before. You think about the retail environment, we all go to shopping centres and we know that they’re more than a place for the weekly grocery shop. They’re entertainment destinations, places to meet friends, go to the movies, eat out, or buy that luxury item you’ve had your eye on. They’re the perfect place for discovery and we know that advertising works in that environment with Australians 32 per cent more likely to purchase/ use a brand if they see it advertised across retail out of home and 46 per cent more likely to remember a brand2.

Retail out of home is at the forefront of out of home, going that next level in capitalising on the unique context of the retail environment to deliver tangible results. This is our sweet spot and for me, helping agency partners realise and unlock the real potential of retail out of home at incredible scale is my sole focus.

Analytic Partners have analysed more than 20 years of data across more than 500 long-term studies and $34bn in AU ad spend across all media from hundreds of brands to understand out of home channels more deeply and the sales impact of every dollar invested.

The findings from Analytic Partners validate the effectiveness of retail out of home proving it as the greatest driver of ROI for FMCG brands, delivering 1.6x effectiveness against total out of home with place based media second to follow at 1.4x. For ROOH, this comes as no surprise due to its walk by nature, context within the shopping environment, creative opportunities and rich targeting capabilities.

And it isn’t just FMCG brands where we see this success of retail out of home.

For non-FMCG category clients, retail out of home comes out on top as the #1 ROI driver in out of home, 1.5x more effective than total out of home.

Leverage the smarts to drive brand results 

This is my favourite part. Making retail out of home work smarter.

With market-leading insights from Everyday Rewards and CommBank iQ, we turn shoppers into customers for brands. These rich insights enable us to identify growth opportunities for brands, deliver in-target and high value reach and analyse campaign impact, regardless of the category. And we’re already seeing results. Take the baby care category example, through smarter targeting, we see an average of 40% increase in sales, customers and units sold.

I’m a sales guy, so I’m going to shamelessly close out on the sell for agencies. ROOH is truly shifting the dial on ROI. Customer-optimised ROOH campaigns are performing better than 1+reach-optimised campaigns.

The key to doing it right, is through customer-led solutions, and nobody understands customers like we do, with the scale to reach them in over 530 centres. We have Australia’s largest retail out of home network that gets brands closest to customers.


By Martin Wood, General Manager, Agency Partnerships and Sales, Cartology.

Source; 

1. Analytic Partners (2024) OOH Advertising/Effectiveness Study (April 2024). N=504
2. Analytic Partners; Collected Mix Models from The Leading Edge & Analytic Partners 2002-2018
3. OOH Advertising/Effectiveness Study (April 2024). N=504.