Now is the Perfect Time to Leverage Out-of-Home Advertising

Matthew O’Connor, CEO and co-founder, AdQuick

“The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed a persistent challenge in health care: sharing public health and general health care initiatives with hard-to-reach and historically underserved communities,” says Matthew O’Connor of AdQuick.

Here’s an excerpt from O’Connor’s new article:

As health care systems and public health departments at the state, county, and local level look to gain momentum and educate their communities about vaccination and other ongoing public health initiatives like diabetes care and flu shots, health care marketers are looking for ways to blanket entire communities with updates as quickly and efficiently as possible. Amid mounting online confusion and misinformation, out-of-home (OOH) advertising is surfacing as an effective, trusted form of communication.

With the ability to reach large groups of people where they are, OOH is an easy-to-access solution for health care marketers looking to share messages with traditionally underserved, multilingual, and rural communities. But many don’t have experience leveraging it. Now’s the time to change that.

The pandemic has accelerated the use of digital technologies. With the rise of virtual learning, online shopping, videoconferencing, and telemedicine, the internet has become a crucial link between people and the outside world. But in this tele-everything world, where work, health care, education, and social activities have moved online, inequities in access and utilization have been magnified.

At the onset of the pandemic, some 53 percent of respondents in a Pew Research Center survey said the internet was essential for them personally. But not everyone has the high-speed broadband required for critical purposes.

When it comes to sharing vital information with the community, whether it’s about COVID-19 vaccinations or any other public health initiative, it’s not just the digital divide that creates a challenge for health care marketers and local health agencies. Location and language also present hurdles that need to be overcome. Out-of-home advertising offers health care marketers a solution to push through these barriers to reach communities.

Learn more: Leveraging Out-of-Home Advertising to Reach Underserved Populations

Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President