What is Ambient Marketing?

Also known as outdoor advertising, it involves putting up ads in unconventional places where people don’t expect to see an advertisement. This form of Advertising focuses on the idea of taking “users by surprise”. Traditional marketing techniques are no longer effective in reaching out to the target audience. Ads via hoardings, banners, or even Television ads Fail miserably to grab the attention of target consumers. People tend to overlook and ignore them as per their convenience. On the contrary, they often notice things which they find unusual and are new to them. 

Advertisers were in need of a technique which could primarily enable them to reach out to the audience in such a way which is entirely different from all traditional ways. With ambient ads, viewers were caught by surprise which drastically improved the performance of advertising campaigns. The success of an ambient marketing campaign largely depends on how creatively the advertiser places an effective message on an item where it is least expected to appear. With the element of surprise attached to it, ambient ads tend to stay longer in one’s memory and they are recalled easily.  More than the text it is always the images that are etched in our memory.
The unconventional places which the advertisers usually target are public transport like trains, buses, metros or benches on the park, zebra crossing, escalators, bridges, building, etc.

Advantages of Ambient Marketing:
  • Greater Reach: Showing ads on uncommon places with high visibility certainly enhances the reach of the ad. More people come across the message which spreads brand awareness and the brand gets known among the target audience.  Ambient ads aren’t planned for any specific category of consumers, rather its more of generic marketing which gets viewed by large no. of potential customers. 
  • Non-intrusive: Ambient campaign doesn’t disturb the consumer or enter in their personal space.  In this era of digital marketing, people keep getting bombarded with all sorts of ads like messages, emails, promotional offers which to an extent irritate them. With ambient marketing, it more like an inbound technique wherein it is not forced upon the potential customer. If the customers find it good enough they engage with the brand. 
  • Creative Factor: Creativity and Novelty of ambient ads are key elements which make them perform better than traditional marketing. Intelligent ads are displayed which encourage the customers to take notice and appealing first impression. The uniqueness of the ads also makes it easy to remember and recall.  These ads are available 24*7.
  • Economical: It’s one of the most ideal marketing techniques for a company or advertiser with limited resources. The budget does matter for any form of advertising but with ambient marketing what matters the most is execution in terms of unconventional place and creativity of ad format.
  • Memorable ads: Ambient marketing makes people see things differently. It’s always the intelligence of advertiser what makes a compelling effect on the consumer for them to engage with the brand.
Examples of Ambient Marketing:

1. Don’t Drink and Drive Ad in public toilet

2. Mac D ad on Zebra crossing

3. Bus handles with watch ads