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When most people hear the term “out-of-home” advertising (OOH), they think of old-school billboards and bus kiosks. Those are still staples of the category, but its growth and innovation are being defined by other approaches at the intersection of physical media and digital targeting.

“People instantaneously think billboards, but it literally can be wrapping a ferry going to a music festival for a brand and throwing a party on said ferry,” said Quan Media Group Founder & CEO Brian Rappaport on the latest episode of Street Fight’s Heard on the Street podcast (listen above). “If you do out-of-home the right way as a brand, you’re going to hit that audience you’re looking to hit. That’s the challenge for me: finding the right fit for so many of the unique brands I work with because really none are the same.”

Rappaport has spent most of his career at other firms developing the out-of-home playbook. Now with the newly-formed Quan, he’s primed to innovate in OOH with a more specialized approach.

Doubling down on specialization, Quan is likewise zeroing in on a specific advertiser category: direct-to-consumer (DTC). That includes brands like Casper and Glossier. The category is not only expanding, but also its players tend to be highly receptive to creative ad strategies.

“I realized that while there are so many amazing OOH agencies out there, there wasn’t one devoted to working with this category that’s exploding,” said Rappaport, citing emerging DTC subcategories like real estate and pet products. They see the opportunity for what the Caspers and Allbirds of the world have done.

Coming full circle to the intersection of OOH with digital and mobile, the former has come a long way from attribution methods like counting cars under billboards. There’s now a great deal more nuance to target content dynamically on digital signage and tie in campaigns to social media, capitalizing on attention-grabbing tactics like Instagram sharing.

“There’s so much you can do now in the attribution and measurement space in out-of-home that also blends into the world of tech,” Rappaport said. “That has really led to the reason why we’re averaging around 3 to 4% year-over-year growth as a category.”

We discuss these directions and the ins and outs of OOH on the latest episode of Heard on the Street. Listen above, find out more about Heard on the Street, and see our episode archive hereContact us if you’d like to sponsor an episode, and check out Street Fight’s media kit for the full slate of visibility options.

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Mike Boland has been a tech & media analyst for the past two decades, specifically covering mobile, local, and emerging technologies. He has written for Street Fight since 2011. More can be seen at Localogy.com