By Berta Ventura, on 20 March 2024
Out of Phone is TikTok's solution designed for brands advertising on the social platform to extend beyond mobile screens and launch their campaigns on digital screens in various environments such as cinemas, restaurants, airports, and more. In essence, Out of Phone represents TikTok's foray into Out of Home (OOH) advertising.
With this tool, brands can expand their digital marketing into other environments, reaching audiences that may not be on TikTok, thus enhancing their impact.
With this OOH advertising from TikTok, the platform aims to take only the most current and engaging content to the streets, focusing on the latest trends on the platform. TikTok also promises to offer customized solutions tailored to each brand's audiences and needs.
This move by TikTok into the real world follows Google's venture into OOH advertising for its Display & Video 360 users.
Different Modalities Within Out of Phone
Out of Phone: Billboard
The billboard variety of Out of Phone allows campaigns that already exist on TikTok to appear on billboards worldwide. To access the billboard modality, brands must first launch a campaign on TikTok, experience growth, and later enhance the campaign's impact by amplifying it on billboards.
Out of Phone: Cinema
In this case, ads appear on the cinema screen before a movie starts, enabling brands to advertise to a more engaged audience.
Out of Phone: Other Screens
Apart from cinemas and billboards, TikTok out of home also extends to digital screens in bars, gas stations, shops, airports, and restaurants.
Benefits of Out of Phone for Brands
- More Space for Creativity: By offering a new advertising space entirely different from what brands advertising on social media are accustomed to, Out of Phone opens up new creative opportunities and ways to communicate.
- Reaching New Audiences: With TikTok's OOH advertising, brands can reach, for example, a more mature audience that may not be present on the social network. In essence, it presents companies with a new world of possibilities where the gap between the online and offline worlds blurs.
- Less Invasive Format: Users are weary of advertising on their devices as it disrupts their experience. However, OOH advertising is less invasive and does not interrupt any activity. Therefore, the public is more receptive to it, which in turn ensures that the message is received more openly and positively.
- Great Visual Appeal: OOH advertising is often much more visually impactful than what we find on mobile devices, tablets, or computers. This makes it much more attention-grabbing and ensures that the message not only reaches more people but also resonates more deeply in the collective imagination, increasing brand awareness.
- More Factors to Play With: On the internet, the timing of a campaign's publication is often adjusted to increase its effectiveness. With OOH advertising, another element, location, can be used to boost results and impact the audience passing through a specific space at a particular time.
- Perfect Complement to Digital Marketing Strategy: TikTok Out of Phone advertising is something that complements a brand's advertising strategies on social media and provides a more tangible presence, as well as a brand reminder when the audience is not using their devices.
- Highly Measurable: One of the great benefits of advertising on social media or any online platform is its high traceability and ability to monitor results. Previously, when OOH advertising was not as advanced, it was difficult to produce good statistics on its performance. However, with technological advancements, outdoor advertising can now be measured well.
Examples of Brands Using TikTok Out of Phone
Outdoor advertising was considered outdated, but with the emergence of digital screens and technological developments, the world of OOH campaigns has received a boost, and platforms like TikTok have used it to their advantage.
To develop this functionality, TikTok collaborates with some OOH advertising companies such as:
- Adomi: A brand that markets digital screens for outdoor and indoor advertising.
- Screenvision: A cinema advertising manager.
- GSTV: Manages television screens at gas stations.
- Redbox: TikTok has also partnered with RedBox, a US-based company that rents and sells movies through various machines nationwide.
RedBox machines are well-known to Americans, and are a reference point that attracts a diverse audience seeking entertainment. TikTok has installed advertising from its brands on the screens of these machines so that anyone who visits them can also see advertising content from the social network.
Brands Using TikTok Out of Phone
CeraVe: CeraVe is a well-known facial and body care brand in the United States that was one of the first to use the OOH functionalities of TikTok. They launched a campaign called #CleanseLikeDerm on the large digital screens of Times Square.
In their #CleanseLikeDerm campaign, the brand aimed to convey the fun of facial cleansing and encouraged users to use a filter if they wanted their video to appear on the big screen in the square.
