Digital Out-of-Home in 2009
Digital Out-of-Home 2009.
Welcome to this, the first issue of the ADCENTRICITY eNewsletter! As a friend of ours, we are sending this along to keep you up to date on happenings at ADCENTRICITY and to provide our views on the state of the digital out-of-home nation. Your feedback and commentary are always welcome through a variety of channels – replying to this email; joining our Facebook page; commenting on our blog; or the old fashioned way by picking up the phone and giving any one of us a call. Of course, you can unsubscribe at any time at the bottom of this email.
The 2009 outlook.
We are entering the year cautiously optimistic about the prospects for digital out-of-home (OOH). Despite the current economic climate, total advertising spending on digital OOH is still projected to be up by over 9% in 2009 (source: PQ Media). Maybe this isn’t as rosy as many had originally projected for digital out-of-home, but it is better than the very dim outlook for traditional media for the upcoming year (consumer magazines suffered a 17.4% decrease in ad spending in Q4). Many industries have adopted the mantra…flat is growth in 2009.
The Digital Out-of-Home landscape.
The challenging economy will lead to many changes this year. Network consolidation is inevitable as some networks thrive and others are challenged by lack of scale and/or lack of a clear business model that appeals to both viewers and advertisers. Look for the trend towards venue specific versus geographically centered networks to accelerate.
Fragmentation continues to be a major factor hampering the adoption of digital out-of-home by media planners and buyers. ADCENTRICITY has grown exponentially to having inventory from over 140,000 screens across North America available from one source, and we feel that aggregation on this scale is absolutely necessary to make the process manageable for time strapped media professionals.
Metrics.
A major milestone towards the broader adoption of digital out-of-home media will be our industry’s ability to provide consistent, credible and understandable audience measurement. Digital OOH audience measurement is still inconsistent at best, and is a considerable hurdle when discussing large campaigns with advertisers and the media agencies.
ADCENTRICITY is taking a leadership role in resolving this issue. We speak with more digital out-of-home networks on a regular basis than any other organization (we have almost 90 registered with us), and are therefore uniquely positioned to help with the adoption of measurement standards. As the newest members of the Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau (OVAB), we are strong proponents of the recent OVAB Audience Measurement Guidelines, and will be actively working to push for their adoption amongst both the agency and network communities. Look for us to make a presentation on this issue at the upcoming Advertising Research Foundation Re:think conference in NYC in late March (more info to come on this event).
It’s a tough time to be a brand marketer (even tougher for an agency!).
It’s not an easy job in the new economic reality to drive growth for brands at the double-digit pace achieved in the heady first years of the new millennium. Traditional measures like market share, awareness, and most importantly, sales objectives are ever harder to reach. What is the optimal media mix to achieve ambitious goals? In a presentation at this week’s NRF conference in New York, digital guru Mitch Joel stressed that no longer is it about “how many” – it’s about “who” and “where”. Reaching a thousand engaged potential customers far down the path-to-purchase is far more advantageous (and efficient) than 100,000 who probably aren’t in the market for your widget.
At the ANA Masters of Marketing annual conference in Orlando this past October presenters in the likes of Jim Spegel – CMO of Proctor and Gamble, BBDO’s CEO Andrew Robertson, Coca Cola’s CMO Joe Tripodi all shared their individual views of the economic challenge faced by all marketers and agencies. The key message: Don’t hunker down. In tough economic times, it’s especially important to take risks. Fight the urge to pull back and go with what’s comfortable. Push boundaries to keep pace.
Enter digital out-of-home. No other medium has the ability to reach a hyper-targeted audience at many touchpoints during their busy day, and even as they are about to make their purchase decision. Digital OOH will be an important tool in the marketing tool belt soon. All of us in the business must continue evangelizing the benefits to the broader marketing community.
What’s going on at ADCENTRICITY?
Lots. The operations and development teams, under the watchful eye of Laurie Freudenberg, our VP of Operations, has launched the most exciting update ever to our already industry-leading software platform. Loading the entire US Census database into the ADVenue platform wasn’t easy, but we now have an incredibly robust planning tool that allows for hyper-targeted campaign plans, enabling planners to optimize and see the right digital out-of-home venues in the right geographic areas based the campaign objectives. If you haven’t seen a demo yet, drop us an email – we’re very proud of our baby, and would love to show you what is now possible.
Secondly, there are many new faces. Our Canadian sales team out of our Toronto office welcomed media sales executive and former MBS member, David Hamilton to the team.
Retail industry veteran Graeme Spicer joined in August as Vice President, Strategic Partnerships and has taken on responsibility for the relationships with our network partners and is spearheading our research and advocacy efforts with OVAB and the ARF.
The US sales teams continues to grow by welcoming Dan Trapani (Chicago) a senior media sales executive with a great deal of experience in the OOH and digital OOH sector. Each team has been very active in sharing the digital out-of-home story from the ADCENTRICITY perspective at pretty much every major agency in the US.
Finally, Mr. Jeff Atley, who founded the firm with Rob Gorrie, has evolved into a pure marketing and business development role. Allowing for a focus on the considerable challenges of communicating the ADCENTRICITY overall solution and capabilities in both the US and Canada. In addition, Jeff Atley will be assessing and developing new lines of business, value adds and partnerships for ADCENTRCITITY as the Digital OOH industry continues to evolve.
Thank you.
We would be remiss if we didn’t take the time to say thanks to all of our friends who have offered encouragement, support and advice in 2008. Last year we moved from an early stage business startup to become the largest digital OOH media planning service in North America. With all sincerity, thanks to you all.
Feel free to contact us at any time.
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Jeff Atley - jeff@adcentricity.com
