FAQs - Bathroom advertising's frequently asked questions

Out of home advertising (OOH), incorporating digital out of home advertising (DOOH), is a form of advertising found outside of a consumer's home e.g. roadside billboards, digital screens at your petrol pump etc. Bathroom advertising falls into the OOH group - framed posters or digital screens are placed within high-traffic public bathroom spaces such as shopping centres, pubs, airports and universities.

The main difference between, for example, a bus covered in decal and bathroom advertising, is that the bathroom space is incredibly private, allowing bathroom-goers to interact with the ad within their own personal space. Versus seeing a bus while you're on a public street, interacting with an ad can be much more difficult.

Out of home advertising (OOH), incorporating digital out of home advertising (DOOH), is a form of advertising found outside of a consumer's home e.g. roadside billboards, digital screens at your petrol pump etc. Bathroom advertising falls into the OOH group - framed posters or digital screens are placed within high-traffic public bathroom spaces such as shopping centres, pubs, airports and universities.

The main difference between, for example, a bus covered in decal and bathroom advertising, is that the bathroom space is incredibly private, allowing bathroom-goers to interact with the ad within their own personal space. Versus seeing a bus while you're on a public street, interacting with an ad can be much more difficult.

Bathroom advertising provides marketers, media buyers, and advertisers with a powerful medium to deliver the right message, to the right audience, at the right time.

Examples:

• Running a bathroom advertising campaign in a licensed venue supercharges the effectiveness of a health messaging campaign by delivering it directly to the specific target audience, at the critical point of risk. E.g., a drink driving message can be delivered to a driver/passenger, in the pub when they're drinking, before they drive home.
• A real-life example is our work with DonateLife. Their message is a sensitive one – register to donate your organs when you pass away. Placing their ads in bathrooms with unique QR codes by state, venue type and gender allowed them to do two things – allow bathroom-goers the one minute it takes to register as an organ donor in private, and gather invaluable data on the type of people who visited the website, and went on to register. Read the full DonateLife case study for more details.

The bathroom environment offers a unique platform to connect with your audience in private. For example, placing a message on the back of a toilet cubicle door provides the perfect opportunity for deeper audience engagement with a complex or sensitive message.

The average total bathroom visit lasts over two minutes, with parent room dwell times averaging 12 minutes. Compare this with the handful of seconds you have to absorb, and act, on other media formats where you have to scroll through a feed on your phone, also having the option to skip it completely.

Active attention is the highest level of attention achievable in advertising. Active attention is achieved when the audience's eyes are looking directly at the ad (or screen, for example). This differs from passive attention (audience's eyes looking at the screen but not the ad) and non-attention (audience eyes looking away from the screen).

The bathroom space delivers active audience attention by placing messages in the natural, uninterrupted line of sight of the message recipient for an extended period.

The latest research by the Advertising Council Australia shows that high attention media platforms can boost the effectiveness of advertising creative by up to 75%. Report authors recommend marketers and media buyers prioritise attention before reach in their choice of media platform to maximise campaign effectiveness.

The report also found that ROI increases by 65% when strong creative is placed on high-attention media, suggesting that placing ads in locations where active attention is high, is more important than overall reach.

Unlike other OOH advertising formats which rely on estimations of audience exposure, bathroom advertising can provide highly measurable results through unique QR code scans, followed by the corresponding website analytics. On top of this, our digital CaptiVision option also offers real-time audience measurement using motion sensors.

The ability to update and/or rotate bathroom advertising campaign creative (using unique QR codes), informed by ongoing audience engagement data, provides an important opportunity to ensure a campaign remains resonates effectively with its target audience.

Bathroom advertising gives you the ability to be incredibly targeted with your campaign placement and marketing spend, segmenting campaign messaging by geographic location, gender, language, demographic and venue type. It can also allow you to saturate the market by utilising a wide range of available placements, reaching millions of people across all states, in metro and regional areas.

Working with a bathroom advertising specialist to determine the optimal media strategy for your campaign allows you to ‘broadcast’ and/or ‘narrowcast’ your message, depending on your required demographic, reach, and objective of your campaign.

Many of Australia's biggest brands and most well-known organisations use bathroom advertising as a core component of their marketing strategy.

Convenience Advertising has worked with hundreds of organisations from a wide range of sectors since 1984 – including:

• Governments and statutory agencies (federal, state and local)
• Not for profits
• Commercial brands (pharmaceuticals, FMCG, baby care, utilities, health and wellbeing)
• Public health groups
• Trade unions
• And many more

Bathroom advertising is cost-effective, especially compared with other out of home advertising channels, traditional and digital media platforms. Contact our sales team to discuss your campaign and receive a personalised quote.