Digital OOH Revenue Trends Up, Knowledge of Space Down

Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, digital ooh, metrics

While there are a lot of rosy numbers, predictions and positive news coming out about Digital OOH from stats, growth analysis and the use of the medium, it’s always a kick in the teeth to realize that folks still really don’t know what makes up the full scope of the Digital OOH space.

If you speak to the average ad layman about DOOH, they generally may recognize some of the more prevalent forms of DOOH such as Gas Stations or Elevators but many simply don’t get the opportunity to end up in the other forms of venues such as malls or convenience stores and so are unaware of the huge amount of opportunities out there. For example, I haven’t actually been IN a mall or Dr Office myself in over 4 years (other than to review DOOH installs)…it’s just not my stage in life or what I do so how would I otherwise run into these forms of DOOH media if I wasn’t in the business?

Case in point Media Life Magazine had a piece earlier this week that painted a relatively rosy picture and a fast recovery for the OOH medium in general. That’s great news and Brian Weiser from Magna is bullish on DOOH and it’s play in driving that growth. As he says:

Place-based media, such as sports stadium ads, digital advertising and cinema will all boost outdoor over the next few years, Wieser predicts.

He says that this year there are 1,519 digital billboards, more than double the number just two years ago. That figure is expected to grow by about 100 per year as controversy over the safety risks of the digital displays dies down

What is disconcerting, to say the least, is to read further down and look into their “analysis” of what they call “Alternative” Outdoor:

magnamid09-outdoora_1

Notice anything wrong with this?

Magna is completely aware that there are 265,455 “faces” for advertising on buses…but he has NO concept of how many digital Convenience Store “faces” there are.

2nd problem?

Listed here are only FOUR categories for “Alternative/Digital” (”Video Networks” is not a category). As many of you know, my company has done a fairly exhaustive breakdown of where we know these DOOH screens exist and we break them down into 16 top-line categories and over 70 sub-categories. Some of these top line categories are:

Airport	Convenience Store
College	Entertainment
Hospitality	Gas Station
Grocery	Office Building
Personal Care	Retail
Health Care	Shopping Centers
Transit

Under “Healthcare” however, you may have DOOH displays in Pediatric, GP, Cardiac, OBGYN, etc…the list goes on and on.

The problem is, if Magna 1.) Doesn’t know how large the list of possible locations actually IS and 2.) Doesn’t know how many are in each category….how the heck can they help support planning or strategy decisions to the media teams they support?

I don’t blame Magna at all for this and OVAB is working hard to get folks like this to understand the true scope and scale of the medium but we have some way to go to let folks understand that there are millions of screens out there that most definitely fit into some of their plans.

Maybe the report does dig deeper and they do have more info but, from the tone and content of the article, it doesn’t sound like it.