No one in London can fail to have noticed the vast increase in digital out-of-home media in recent years.
Clear Channel's iconic Piccadilly site and Titan's Transvision screens on railway station concourses blazed the trail, as did CBS Outdoors' escalator panels, six-sheets and cross-track projection screens in Tube stations.
Then there are the impressive Torch special build and 48-sheet screens on the main arterial roads into town and numerous digital panels at Heathrow Terminal 5 and Westfield shopping centre. And digital outdoor is not confined to London, with the City Gateway Tower in Manchester, Ocean's LED media wall in Liverpool and Forrest's CityScreens in Glasgow and Manchester. Add this to taxis, toilets, health clubs and cash machines and there are plenty of DOOH options for advertisers. Yet, despite all this, digital outdoor still only represents 7.1% of overall out-of-home advertising spend.
Last week's DOOH Media Summit at Olympia, in association with Media Week, provided an excellent opportunity for the industry to debate the challenges DOOH faces in its second phase of growth. The case studies presented emphasised that DOOH can deliver advertisers meaningful connections or exchanges with consumers in a tailored and flexible fashion, epitomised by day-part campaigns.
But Samsung's Gerry D'Angelo cautioned that it is still difficult for clients to justify the extra investment necessary to produce a DOOH campaign. He called for more measurement and proof of ad effectiveness, though was momentarily stumped when one wag suggested Samsung should lower its digital screen prices to boost take-up.
There won't be the same capital investment by out-of-home media owners in the next 18 months, due to the high cost of rollout and tough economic conditions. The big outdoor media owners also have to balance protecting their existing "traditional" inventory with pushing digital opportunities aggressively: two objectives that aren't necessarily mutually compatible.
No outdoor specialist would bite the bullet and estimate the percentage of spend DOOH needs to achieve to reach the scale that will bring costs down, though Mark Middlemas at UM suggested 10% as a realistic share to aim for in the next year or so.
In the meantime, agencies must make sure they produce bespoke creative and planning for digital outdoor, while integrating activity in overall campaigns from the start.
