Hong Kong ā€“ Xaxis, the outcome media specialist from GroupM, has announced that it has launched its first-ever programmatic digital out-of-home (pDOOH) campaign at MTRā€™s advertising in Hong Kong. The campaign ran throughout Hong Kong for loan and financial services company United Asia Finance Limited.

The advertisements were shown in eight high traffic locations across 41 panels located within the MTR network in Wan Chai, Causeway Bay, Admiralty, Central, Tsim Sha Shui, Mong Kok, and Prince Edward through exclusive access with the MTR Trackside Digital Motion Network.

The campaign featured three creative advertisements that utilised time targeting based on the operational hours of surrounding businesses while factoring in weekends and public holidays to ensure the best content with the right context is shown to the right audience. 

ā€œWith Xaxisā€™ programmatic expertise, United Asia Finance Limited was able to take flexible campaign planning to the next level and elevate its OOH advertisements, allowing it to dynamically define its station mix, panel mix, and audience type, and set messages to be delivered at the best time possible,ā€ the company said in a press statement.

The pDOOH campaign will catapult MTR advertising into a new automated phase of OOH with programmatic. It will provide real-time flexibility for United Asia Finance Limited to curate a captive viewing environment by identifying the best time, audience, location and messages to create an effective, efficient, and brand safe channel for its campaigns.

Andy Chung, managing director of Xaxis in Hong Kong, said, ā€œWeā€™re thrilled to make history with MTR advertising and United Asia Finance Limited to launch the first pDOOH campaign at MTR and deliver dynamic content to Hong Kong commuters. Programmatic will bring about a whole new definition of digital creativity for advertisers and consumers alike, providing a non-intrusive avenue for passengers to engage in relevant and high value interactions with brands. It gives marketers much more flexibility such as time targeting, creative changes, or even triggering the ad with real time weather conditions or stock market index.ā€

Meanwhile, Shirley Chan, managing director at JCDecaux Transport, commented, ā€œUtilising the reach of Hong Kongā€™s MTR network and the flexibility of programmatic, advertising campaigns are reaching and best resonating with the audience at any time or place. MTR advertising offers the largest coverage of DOOH in Hong Kong, and by having this level of precision, marketers can truly direct the most captivating creative advertisements to the largest audience. We are excited that UA Finance smartly integrates the flexibility of programmatic digital out-of-home (pDOOH) into the MTR network with dynamic content capabilities to deliver tactical and contextual messaging, thus allowing its ad content to be optimised against specific data parameters to ensure the very best target audiences are reached.ā€

Lastly, Elvis Yan, chief marketing officer at United Asia Finance Limited, said, ā€œWe are eager to explore innovative and convenient ways to connect with our customers, and fascinated to learn that UA Finance is the first advertiser to tap into MTR advertising with pDOOH. Itā€™s an exciting space for us to celebrate a new chapter of our innovative journey. Leveraging the powerful visual impact of OOH plus the new programmatic capabilities, this location-based marketing platform enables us to reach a large volume of on-the-go target audiences throughout the day, bringing big uplifts in impressions and efficiency.ā€Ā 

He added, ā€œAt selected MTR locations, we adopt dynamic creative display technology to develop scenario-base ads to communicate our service offering. We strongly believe this innovative solution will be a popular trend for advertising in the new era. It perfectly complements our integrated marketing strategy, tapping into the holistic customer journey.ā€

Hong Kong ā€“ Local rail operator MTR has announced the launch of its programmatic trading offering, across its network composed of 418 digital panels in 51 MTR stations in Hong Kong.

This new automated programmatic planning and trading offering will accelerate the growth of Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising, connecting advertisers and MTR advertising in a premium marketplace, combining audience targeting and impression data to create an intelligent, automatic and advanced DOOH trading solution to meet Hong Kong marketers’ needs.

MTR advertising is utilising this new technological media trading solution to meet the new expectations of its clients and to increase the competitiveness of MTR DOOH in the market. The new pDOOH offering gives advertisers considerable flexibility to optimise playout for maximum efficiency and to accommodate a flexible range of campaign budgets, ad duration and shares of time. 

Advertisers can choose among different trading models through a private marketplace (PMP) and can trade by either guaranteed price & impression (GPI), guaranteed price (GP) or non-guaranteed (NG) floor price via their demand-side platform (DSP), based on CPM (cost per thousand impressions).

Teresa Fung, chief media and business development manager for Hong Kong Transport Services at MTR Corporation, said, ā€œWe are excited to be the first metro in Asia to offer Programmatic Digital Out-of-Home as it is further enhancing our digital transformation journey. We believe that programmatic DOOH is the latest market-driven solution to cater to marketer’s needs to target specific audience(s) efficiently.ā€ 

She added, ā€œTogether with smart technology, MTR advertising provides a flexible and effective platform for advertisers to showcase their digital creativity and facilitates dynamic and engaging advertising campaigns. This not only brings greater commercial value to advertisers, but also optimises the passengers’ journeys with more new experiences and meaningful engagements.ā€

MTR advertising strategically partners with VIOOH, a leading supply-side platform (SSP), who trades with over 35 DSP partners globally, including Hivestack, The Trade Desk and Yahoo, among others. This latest pDOOH offering will optimise MTR advertising campaign performance and can enable seamless online planning to offline outdoor advertising (O2O) through greater flexibility and agility.

Meanwhile, Shirley Chan, managing director at JCDecaux Transport, commented, ā€œWith the rapid development and growing demand for DOOH, programmatic trading has become an irresistible trend. We are excited that MTR advertising is achieving another important milestone by connecting to the programmatic digital ecosystem. MTR advertising programmatic trading can deliver brands greater efficiency, transparency, brand-safety, and measurable advertising, while also linking brands to the right target audience at the right time and right moment, in the right location, and with the right message to optimise deliveries of clients’ campaigns across the MTR network successfully. Our passion and aim are to enhance the position of MTR advertising as the pioneer in OOH digital transformation and we are confident that advertisers and agencies will seize this irresistible new opportunity.ā€ 

Lastly, Jean-Christophe Conti, chief executive officer at VIOOH, added, ā€œWe’re thrilled to participate in this programmatic offering across the MTR network in Hong Kong. It’s an exciting time for the digital out of home industry as programmatic adoption takes off globally, especially in Hong Kong where 94% of media agencies and leading brand executives stated they plan to integrate programmatic DOOH within the next 18 months. This reiterates to us that the future of pDOOH in this region is looking strong and it’s a big opportunity for the DOOH industry.ā€