The trust placed in Out of Home will be key to the medium’s further expansion, said World Out of Home Organization President Tom Goddard at last week’s Central Europe Forum in Warsaw, Poland.
While OOH is growing in double digits, driven by the success of digital OOH, its growth still remains below online media in the worldwide marketplace. Goddard predicts that this will change over the next five years and beyond, thanks in part to a major shift in marketers’ views of social media platforms.
“Regulators seem to be finally catching up with Big Tech’s reckless disregard for their customer base, particularly younger users,” said Goddard, noting how numerous countries are currently considering adopting the much-publicised ban for the under 16’s in Australia. “This is not surprising when you see the elevated instances of clinical depression; body Image distortion; cyber bullying; and online predators. We’ve also seen huge fines on Meta in what has been described as Social Media’s tobacco moment.”
Commercially, said Goodard, ad fraud continues to cost brands billions, advertising systems are generating fake impressions, clicks or conversions are undermining the legitimacy of social media as an advertising tool, while AI slop is increasingly undermining the medium and at the same time redefining the way search works as an advertising model.
Why is this an opportunity for OOH? Numerous research studies including a recent one from Outfront in the US show OOH in the No 1 position in consumer trust, building brands in real life (IRL) as opposed to online.
Goddard shared his belief that the OOH industry should make more of this and outlined the drivers of growth in the modern media age.
“Proving effectiveness is something we need to address urgently and a major industry-wide initiative is being hatched to demonstrate this. Likewise, better audience measurement and data is a fundamental requirement yet there are still many markets that don’t have this or have a system that’s neither comprehensive nor unified.
“In terms of wider AdTech Connectivity, we’re getting there as an industry on programmatic trading, but the bulk of our trading is still cumbersome, labour intensive, not joined up. Consolidation of platforms and AdTech providers is much needed.”
Goddard also called for stronger promotion of OOH’s competitive advantages: “Much has been achieved, not least by WOO which now represents 300 OOH Media Owners worldwide. More dynamic national trade associations are needed too.”
Goddard concluded by calling for more collaboration to underpin the impressive growth of OOH worldwide.
The World Out of Home Organization is the only global Out of Home Association, working to promote and improve the OOH industry on behalf of its members. Board members include the major international company – JCDecaux – as well as blowUP media and Ocean Outdoor from Europe, OUTFRONT Media and Lamar from the US, Provantage from South Africa, oOh!media from Australia, Asiaray from Hong Kong and the Multiply Media Group from the UAE. In addition, the following OOH associations are represented on the Board, the OAAA in the US, Alooh from Latin America, the IOAA from India, B|A|M from Germany, ABOOH from Brazil and the OMA in Australia.
