Article
The year ahead for Outdoor
T
he stage is set for a transformative year, thanks to
significant investment, the Smart Cities initiative and robust
audience data.
The out-of-home sector has been tremendously resilient
throughout the recessionary years, showing consistent growth
driven by its fundamental benefits. In an ever-fragmenting media
landscape, you can still reach pretty much the entire population,
all at the same time.
Recent years have been characterised by digitisation, and 2016 is
no different. However, all the ingredients are there for a truly
transformational year. This includes:
1. Investment: more than £100 million of investment across the
industry in upscaling and creating new digital sites.
2. Collaboration: the Smart Cities initiative will give OOH a greater
role in consumers' lives.
3. "Back-end" management and
connection: media owners are
creating truly digital connected
networks for programmatic
automation.
4. Agility: dynamic digital ad-serving.
5. Audience data: micro-granular
audience data for analysis and
insight.
If we examine these elements in
more depth, you will see that OOH is
advancing at a faster pace than most
people might have thought.
I n v e s t m e n t
2016 will see media owners invest an
unprecedented £100 million-plus
into new digital infrastructure – that's
more than 10 per cent of turnover.
This is part of an ongoing trend,
which has stepped up a gear after the
move of Transport for London’s busshelter contract last year. The
upcoming London Underground
announcement in March, the biggest
OOH contract in the world, will
undoubtedly continue this momentum.
One of the most visible digital transformations will be JCDecaux's
digital roll-out across London, which will see more than 1,000
former six-sheets reimagined with the latest 84-inch screens,
creating a multitude of creative and technical capabilities.
Other changes include Adshel Live and ongoing site development
in major cities from media owners and digital specialists such as
Ocean and Outdoor Plus.
The upshot is that digital revenues will continue to grow – at a rate
in excess of 25 per cent this year – and we estimate that digital's
share of total OOH revenue will be about 45 per cent.
However, this level of investment will not be sustainable unless
digital OOH succeeds in attracting incremental revenue. Top-line
total OOH revenue growth will be about 4 per cent this year,
meaning we are cannibalising more than we are growing.
The opportunity, though, has never been clearer and all the
elements are almost in place to demonstrate that OOH has a larger
and more agile part to play.
Collaboration
A lot of OOH exists on the back of provision of public utility –
think bus shelters that keep citizens dry at no expense, in return
for the right to advertise to them.
This relationship will be rebooted in 2016 through a reimagining of
this public utility via the government-funded initiative Smart
Cities.
More than £178 million will be spent by 2018 to further research
and fund projects. It involves outside financial influencers such as
the UK's leading outdoor media owners as they look to transform
the physical landscape and connection moments audiences have
with OOH.
Back-end' management and connection
Hardly a week went by last year without something being
written about "programmatic OOH". An increasing number of
tech start-ups have entered the fray – this can only be a good
thing in terms of accelerating innovation, and says something
about the appeal of the sector.
It's a big challenge that starts with the automation to unlock
flexibility in an increasingly digital medium, such as the ability to
deploy messaging at scale in near real
time.
Following this, a mass-scale solution could
arrive sooner than people may believe –
the crux of the challenge sits in a medium
t h at i s n o t p re d i cate d o n d i g i ta l
infrastructure.
But the drive among media owners to
address this is not only speeding up but, in
many cases, almost completely delivered.
JCDecaux's Smartbrics and Clear
Channel's Play IQ platforms have allowed
us at Posterscope to test live availability
and we are working on finalising the
automation of purchase transaction.
This creates greater efficiencie