In the rapidly evolving landscape of out-of-home (OOH) advertising, where each billboard, digital display, and transit ad grabs consumer attention when people are on the move, there’s a unique, often overlooked OOH space making a significant impact when people are still – bathroom advertising.
Convenience Advertising pioneered bathroom advertising globally in 1984. This year, we are celebrating 40 years of delivering millions of messages, seen billions of times across 14 countries.
Bathroom advertising offers marketers the chance to engage with audiences in a private, distraction-free setting, presenting benefits that go far beyond other advertising channels.
Picture this: you’re in a public bathroom, staring at the back of a toilet door or the urinal wall. Straight in front of you, there’s a poster, and what else is there to do? So, you give it a read. You’re a captive audience to the message in that bathroom from anywhere between 1 to 2 minutes, and up to 12 minutes in a parent room.
If your product, service or message requires some explanation, or lives in the bathroom, keep reading.
The untapped potential of bathroom advertising in your OOH strategy
Enhanced recall rates
Bathroom ads excel in this area with a minimum audience recall of 70 per cent. The unique context — away from the daily bombardment of messages we face – means that people are more likely to remember your ad. This increased recall translates to greater engagement and, ultimately, a higher conversion rate.
Amplifying multichannel campaigns
Brands with consistent, effective multichannel marketing achieve a 9.5 per cent increase in annual revenue on average, and have customer retention rates around 91 per cent higher than those that don’t. Plus, integrating bathroom advertising into a broader multichannel strategy is proven to amplify the ROI of any digital campaign. This synergy between channels enriches the consumer’s experience of the brand, reinforcing the message across different touchpoints and driving higher overall campaign performance.
Continuous exposure & attention
Bathroom advertising offers exposure without the risk of being skipped, allowing your message to be fully absorbed. The setting of a bathroom ensures uninterrupted visibility; messages are placed in the natural line of sight whether you’re in a cubicle, or at a urinal, basin, or hand dryer. In a space where the audience is essentially captive, these ads are immune to the ad fatigue that plagues many digital platforms.
Seamless customer journeys
Interactive elements like QR codes connect physical ads to digital campaigns, creating a smooth, trackable user experience from offline to online engagement.
Precision targeting
Venues such as shopping centres, pubs and airports, can be selected based on the profile of their typical visitors (also based on location and gender), allowing for highly tailored campaigns that directly speak to the interests and needs of the audience.
Beyond Blue CEO, Georgie Harman, speaks about the Convenience Advertising partnership
“Your bathroom network in particular, remains our most effective channel over the last 15 years. We know that people go to our website. We know that people call our support service, directly as a result of seeing the communication messages through your networks,” said Harman.
“Together, we’ve been taking positive messages out to the community about mental health, encouraging help-seeking, smashing stigma, educating people, and changing attitudes and behaviours. Our campaigns have changed lives, and I’m sure saved lives too.”
What’s the latest evidence telling us?
Recent research by The Advertising Council of Australia shows that high-attention media channels were found to supercharge the effectiveness of strong creative by up to 75 per cent.
The report recommends that marketers and media buyers should prioritise attention overreach, complementing OMD research on the importance of active attention to ensure a brand is at the forefront of its audience’s mind in purchasing situations.
The lessons are twofold: 1) active attention is a decisive factor in positively influencing ad recall and behaviour change and 2) choosing a high-attention media platform is a major factor in determining the effectiveness of a marketing campaign.
Read the full OOH research report
Learn about the proven synergy between OOH and digital advertising, and discover how integrating alternative types of advertising can amplify your campaigns.
Access the OOH report or click to find out more about bathroom advertising.
