The digital tide is turning as Gen Z and Gen Alpha favor real-life experiences over digital interactions. They’ve even coined the phrase “touch grass.” It is used both as advice and as an insult, encouraging people to put down their screens and engage with the real world.
Those generations are not rejecting technology. Instead, they are refining how and where it fits within their daily life — especially when it comes to social interaction and downtime. Gen Z and Gen Alpha use digital interactions to accent their real-world experiences, not replace them.
Their growing dissatisfaction with living through digital screens fuels the surge of interest in third spaces. These places offer a strategy gold mine for savvy marketers looking to get their message in front of those audiences.
Reaching Audiences Through Third Space Marketing
What are third spaces? The term is tossed around often, but rarely defined.
A third space is somewhere you go/hang out that’s not your home (first space) or the place you spend the majority of your time, such as school or work (second space).
A third space is where people go for recreation, relaxation, and interaction. These places can include stores, faith communities, local parks, and other public places. Oftentimes, but not always, these are places that don’t charge a fee, making them easy to attend/utilize.
Among the top third space locations for Gen Z and Gen Alpha are student unions, dining halls, and campus fitness centers. All three are convenient, non-academic, relaxing, fun, stimulating, and support real-life interaction with other people. They are places to meet, talk, and engage in a manner not possible online.
You know who else spends time in those same third spaces? Digital Out of Home Media. It’s present where Gen Z and Gen Alpha are spending more and more of their time. Using DOOH puts your message, your brand, your limited-time offer, and sales promotion in front of important audiences while they are relaxed, happy, and feeling positive.
All it takes to activate DOOH in campus-based third spaces is a connected partner.
Streamlining the Campus Media Buying Marketplace
Every media buyer understands that placing messages across a campus is messy and time-intensive. Why? Fragmentation.
There is no media unification across campus facilities, programs, and opportunities. Covering a single campus with your marketing materials means working with three, four, five, or more media sellers. That’s per campus, and the next targeted campus will likely have an entirely different list of contacts. But there is an easy solution: have Momentara do it for you.
Momentara makes the contacts, gets pricing, negotiates contracts, and all the rest from procurement to fulfillment to auditing/reporting. Many times, we already have relationships in place. Momentara is your single point of contact for activating any campus media opportunities.
An added bonus: you can have Momentara handle non-campus OOH media buys, too. From third spaces to in-store and to-the-door, Momentara is a full-service conduit to a broad menu of media placements nationwide.
Isn’t DOOH Just Another Screen?
Technically, yes, DOOH adds screens to an environment, but how audiences view, use, and consider them is drastically different.
When audiences enjoy third spaces, they are not trying to eliminate screens or hide from them. People already enter these third spaces with smartphones, smartwatches, and other beloved devices. What people are actually doing in third spaces is de-emphasizing screens.
Within a third space, a screen is no longer the primary portal for engagement and entertainment. Instead, screens act as supplements to the moment. They add information on request or as needed. That’s exactly the role DOOH serves.
DOOH screens display timely, often contextually relevant marketing messages or public service announcements. The messages can range from promoting an energy drink sold in the student commons to sharing important campus health and safety information.
There’s another important difference worth discussing. DOOH screens are not personal screens. They don’t demand your constant attention with ongoing notifications, rings, or vibrations. DOOH complements the experience and the moment, whereas personal screens are always fighting to draw your attention back into their digital brain rot.
DOOH allows brands to be present when their audiences are at their most relaxed, social, and open to suggestions.
The Strategic Advantages of Place-Based Media in Third Spaces
DOOH is successful in third spaces for the same reasons it excels in any environment. It delivers contextually relevant, authentic information when audiences are most likely to receive it.
Perhaps the most appreciated advantage of DOOH campaigns is programmatic flexibility.
Your marketing messages can be bought, optimized, and updated automatically in real-time using software and data.
That means fewer limitations and greater opportunities to tweak, enhance, and ensure campaign results. DOOH also allows advertisers to use messages based on dayparting, weather, or other triggers. For example, tell sports fans in the student union that after every win, they get 50% off sandwiches at a local quick-service restaurant (QSR).
Why Third Spaces Create High-Value DOOH Moments
Third spaces are growing in popularity. That alone is reason enough for marketers to reallocate dollars to third-space marketing opportunities. But having a lot of people in a space isn’t the only upside.
Third Spaces Offer Marketers
- High dwell time
- Lower message overload
- Social reinforcement of messages shared and discussed with friends
- Emotionally positive environments
- No-scroll/swipe left or right memory reflex
Unlike mobile or social feed advertising, DOOH doesn’t fight for milliseconds of attention. DOOH in third spaces provides longer exposure, repeated messages that have time to be considered and reconsidered, increasing brand recognition and message impact.
If your brand wants to show up in moments that matter — when attention is ambient, social, and real — third space DOOH offers one of the most valuable opportunities in modern marketing.
Ready to Engage Gen Z and Gen Alpha with DOOH?
DOOH in third spaces is just one aspect of in-the-moment marketing — a strategy created by Momentara. We turn in-store, out-of-home, and event promotions into useful touchpoints that sync with the customer’s routines to encourage behaviors. The Momentara approach makes your marketing messages a welcome, impactful, and natural part of the customer’s day.
Whether your media buying needs are focused on DOOH third space marketing or you’re intrigued by the in-the-moment opportunities offered by Momentara, we invite you to reach out. We bring you the technology, experience, production, scale, resources, and national presence to build certainty and programmatic success.
