Out-of-home advertising continues to benefit from digital technology and continued audience erosion for other forms of traditional media, according to a new report released Monday by the Out-of-home Marketing Association of Canada (OMAC).
Out-of-home advertising revenues for the first quarter of 2016 were 6% higher than the corresponding time period in 2015, according to Nielsen numbers cited by OMAC.
Jacques Major, marketing and communications director with OMAC, said digital had emerged as a key revenue driver for the industry. OMAC’s member companies currently have about 10,000 digital faces (both outdoor and indoor) in the marketplace, and continue to add digital inventory or swap out static faces.
Digital is having a profound impact on the industry as a whole, with an October report from U.S. research company eMarketer predicting it would account for 40% of all out-of-home spending in the world’s largest ad market last year, up from 38.1% just one year earlier.
The company predicted U.S. advertisers would spend $2.96 billion on digital in 2015, increasing to $4.08 billion – 53% of the total out-of-home advertising market – by 2018.
According to Major, the top 10 out-of-home categories by spend in Canada are retail, telecommunications, media, quick-service restaurants, entertainment, automotive, travel, beverage alcohol, food and real estate.
While there is some overlap, there are some distinctions between the Canadian and U.S. markets, most notably the significance of government and political advertising in the U.S., largely driven by the 2016 election.
Major said marketers were also increasingly using out-of-home as a lead medium rather than as a complement to other media. “It’s all about delivering high ROI, and [out-of-home] also has both mass and targeted reach,” said Major. “You can use to it to do very targeted [campaigns].”
The continued evolution of digital has also led to early experimentation with making inventory available programmatically.
Last week saw the launch of Campsite Global, which was developed in association with Newad’s digital development team and enables advertisers to launch targeted campaigns based on geo-location, gender, age, demographics and other fully customizable criteria taken from venues where the digital faces are located.
This enables advertisers to theoretically purchase a campaign displaying only during hockey games and in those establishments broadcasting the game, said Campsite.
The service launched last week with premier access for its two testing partners: IPG Mediabrands’ ad tech unit Cadreon and ZenithOptimedia, both of which have agreed to provide feedback during initial transactions.
