DOOH & Dynamic pause ads Case Study
How O'Neill's Funeral Directors Stayed Visible Throughout Belfast
For many businesses, the challenge isn't simply getting noticed. It's staying visible throughout a potential customer's day.
At Elevate Media NI, we recently delivered a multi-channel awareness campaign for O'Neill's Funeral Directors that combined Digital Out of Home through Adshel Live panels across Belfast along with Dynamic Pause Ads on ITVX, creating multiple touchpoints with the same audience while they are outdoors and at home.
The campaign was designed to build trust, familiarity and local awareness in a highly sensitive and competitive sector.
The Objective
As one of Belfast's longest-established independent funeral directors, O'Neill's wanted to strengthen awareness across the city while reinforcing their reputation for compassionate, family-led care.
The campaign focused on:
Increasing brand awareness across Belfast
Strengthening local visibility
Reinforcing trust and familiarity
Reaching audiences across multiple environments
Creating repeated exposure throughout the customer journey
For businesses operating in sensitive sectors, awareness is often built long before a service is needed. Familiarity and trust play a significant role in future decision-making, making long-term brand visibility essential.
Why We Chose Adshel Live
Roadside Digital Outdoor remains one of the most effective ways to reach people in their everyday routines. Adshel Live is the platform that allows us access to this.
Unlike many advertising channels that can be skipped, muted or scrolled past, Adshel Live panels are positioned directly within busy commuter routes, shopping districts and residential areas where audiences naturally spend time whilst outdoors.
For O'Neill's Funeral Directors, this made perfect sense.
Their audience is broad. Families, professionals, retirees and local residents all move through Belfast's busiest routes daily. Adshel Live allowed the brand to appear repeatedly in front of those audiences in trusted, highly visible environments.
Benefits of Adshel Live:
High-footfall Belfast locations
Strong dwell times
Repeated daily exposure
Premium digital format
Geographic targeting
Excellent brand recall
The campaign featured locations across Belfast, helping ensure O'Neill's remained visible to thousands of local residents every day.
Children’s Hospital, Belfast - one of the key locations used during the campaign.
Glider Stop Children’s Hospital
The Creative Approach
The outdoor creative focused on a simple but powerful message:
"Our Family Helping Yours"
Rather than overwhelming viewers with information, the campaign centered on trust, heritage and reassurance.
The creative featured:
Strong brand recognition
A clear family-focused message
Consistent visual identity
Contact information for immediate action
A premium, professional appearance
Outdoor advertising works best when messages can be understood within seconds. Keeping the design simple helped maximise impact while maintaining the dignity expected from a funeral services provider. Simple, clear messaging designed for maximum impact and readability.
Extending Reach with ITVX Ad Pause
While the Adshel Live campaign created visibility across Belfast, we wanted to reinforce that awareness when audiences were relaxing at home.
That's where advertising through Dynamic Pause Ads on ITVX came into the strategy.
Ad Pause placements appear when viewers pause content, giving brands a full-screen presence without competing against other moving adverts. This creates a highly visible environment where messages can be absorbed for longer periods.
However, rather than simply repurposing existing artwork, we developed creative specifically for the Ad Pause environment.
The Creative Idea
Headline: “Paused But We're Not”
The message immediately acknowledged what the viewer was doing while reinforcing O'Neill's availability whenever families need support. Worked perfectly within the format.
This created a natural connection between the advertising environment and the service being promoted.
The creative also featured:
O'Neill's iconic funeral vehicle
Established since 1991 messaging
Prominent contact details
24-hour availability
Strong trust signals through Google Reviews
The result was a premium full-screen advert that remained visible while viewers paused content, creating a level of attention rarely achieved through traditional advertising.
ITVX Ad Pause creative was specifically designed for the platform, creating a memorable interaction with viewers.
Why Dynamic Ad Pause Works
Unlike traditional television advertising, Dynamic Ad Pause captures audiences during a natural break in their viewing experience.
Benefits include:
Higher Attention: The advert remains visible while the viewer has paused content.
Longer Viewing Times: Exposure often lasts significantly longer than a standard TV commercial.
Less Competition: The brand occupies the entire screen without competing messages.
Strong Brand Recall: The format creates a memorable interruption point that audiences naturally associate with the brand.
For O'Neill's Funeral Directors, ITVX reinforced the awareness already created through Adshel Live, helping audiences encounter the same brand message in a completely different setting.
The Power of Combining Outdoor and Connected TV
The real strength of this campaign wasn't Adshel Live, it wasn't ITVX, it was the combination of both. Consumers encountered the O'Neill's brand at multiple moments throughout their day.
Morning Commute: Adshel Live digital bus shelters
City Centre Journeys: Repeated outdoor exposure
Evening Viewing: ITVX Ad Pause advertising
Brand Reinforcement
Consistent messaging across every touchpoint. Research shows that repeated exposure across multiple channels significantly improves brand recall and recognition. In advertising, familiarity drives trust. When consumers see a brand on their commute and later encounter the same brand while watching television content, recall becomes significantly stronger.
The Power of Local Visibility
For service-based businesses operating within specific geographic areas, relevance matters.
Adshel Live allowed O'Neill's Funeral Directors to maintain a strong presence within Belfast, while ITVX extended that visibility into households across the same market. The result was a campaign built around local awareness, community trust and long-term brand recognition.
Results: Visibility Where It Matters Most
While awareness campaigns are often measured over the longer term, the campaign successfully achieved its primary objective:
Keeping O'Neill's Funeral Directors visible, recognisable and trusted across Belfast.
By combining premium outdoor advertising with connected TV, the campaign delivered a consistent brand experience throughout the day and demonstrated the power of integrated media planning.
Ready to Build a Smarter Local Campaign?
At Elevate Media NI, we help brands connect outdoor, television, radio and digital advertising into campaigns that work together, not separately.
Whether you're looking to dominate key locations across Belfast with Adshel Live, explore ITVX Ad Pause advertising, or build a fully integrated media strategy, we can create a campaign designed around your audience and objectives.
Get in touch to discuss your next campaign.
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