2024 is not going to be the Year of anything. I have written and published swathes of stories promising that this year, really this time, is the year of mobile. Or the year of CTV, Or the year of omnichannel. Or programmatic OOH (more of which later).
2024 isn’t going to be the year of anything.
Not even AI.
When it comes to digital media and marketing, it’\s going to be the year of everything.
The reason the Year of Mobile is still held up as so either so seismic or such an amusing cliche, is that it was a good story.
Mobile, content or advertising, had been held up for so long as the most transformative, disruptive technological shift since the dotcom boom. Endless thought pieces, let’s be honest, including many by me, bemoaned the fact that advertising budgets weren’t keeping up with consumer behaviour, and shifting to mobile. The reason for such apathy was of course that the mobile experience itself was so clunky and user unfriendly.
What changed everything as the launch of the iPhone, transforming the mobile experience and ushering in an industry worth billions of dollars.
A simple, technically robust and widely supported platform is always at the heart of the year of anything becoming reality.
Over the last year of so we’ve seen such strong underlying frameworks emerge for CTV, programmatic OOH, omnichannel, influencer marketing and more
The building blocks for all our now firmly in place. Across all such mediums and platforms, advertisers and the agencies that serve them are able to deliver, execute and measure incredibly creative campaigns that do what the best advertising is supposed to do, engage, inform and delight consumers no matter what platform or device they’re on.
So, back to programmatic OOH. We ran an event on this, at the time, new sector a few years ago and such was the excitement around it, it was standing room only, with people desperate to discover the opportunities. The following few years saw interest ebb and flow in the medium as technological and interoperability issues were addressed behind the scenes.
It was the pandemic of course that was programmatic OOH’s iPhone moment, demonstrating its adaptive and creative power to brands and agencies.
A report towards the end of last year from Viooh found UK advertisers planning to boost spend on programmatic OOH by almost a third (31%) over the next 18 months.
The surge in interest post pandemic helped boost investment in both technology and real estate, meaning highly targeted, dynamic, measurable, data-driven programmatic OOH advertising is a reality today for most advertisers.
Personally, I love OOH advertising and the boost it’s received from such technologies has, simply, made my daily commute through London that bit better.
It’s another reason I’m so excited about our partnership with JCDecaux to launch the Programmatic DOOH Live Awards.
Focussed purely on programmatic OOH campaigns, it’s the first time, the focus has been put solely on this most exciting new sector.
Also for someone that’s put on, hosted and attended hundreds of awards shows, I’m so excited that, again for the first time, these awards are going to be judged live on the day itself.
2024 isn’t going to be the Year of anything on its own but programmatic OOH is undoubtedly going to be one of its stars.
