Programmatic DOOH advertising lands at Hong Kong airport

There may not be as many travellers passing through Hong Kong International Airport these days, but JCDecaux is nonetheless investing for the future when throngs of passengers may return.

The out-of-home media company has announced it’s launching programmatic trading capabilities for the more than 100 digital screens it manages at HKIA, a welcome investment these days for the airport’s operator.

"We are excited to be the first major international airport to launch programmatic DOOH for advertising inventories and further enhance HKIA's advertising digital transformation,” said Kitty Lo, general manager of retail and advertising at Airport Authority Hong Kong. “We believe programmatic buying is the future trend, and introducing this new platform at HKIA will elevate passenger engagement to a whole new level."

While the timing may seem odd to invest in airport advertising capabilities, JCDecaux Transport managing director Shirley Chan suggestsed that it's precisely at this time that brands really need more flexibility and transparency in their ad buying.

“Fully embracing the new normal, we are now equipped with state-of-the-art technology and audience data capability to answer brands’ latest needs with this flexible and accountable trading platform, enabling brands to maximize their campaign budget and impact,” Chan said in a statement to Campaign Asia-Pacific.

To deliver this, JCDecaux is teaming up with an automated planning and trading platform called VIOOH that connects the ad inventory with DSPs and buyers to trade in near real-time. They argue that programmatic technology is making digital OOH more accountable and precise through better measurement and transparent trading, which allows buyer to better target and gauge the messages displayed for certain audiences.

The media company has developed its own audience-targeting systems as well as its own measurement system specifically for airports, called Airport Audience Measurement (AAM). This provides standardised global metrics looking at numbers of unique passengers, reach and frequency in order to send contextually relevant ads to the right times and locations.  

JCDecaux Transport has been managing the advertising concessions for the Hong Kong International Airport since its opening in 1998.

Other airports are also moving towards programmatic DOOH services. Earlier this year, digital-out-of-home platform Lemma teamed up with GroupM to launch the first programmatic campaign at India’s busiest airport, CSI Mumbai.