By Paul Donato

According to Zenith, projections for OOH media spending in 2018 could reach $10 billion. Paul Donato, Chief Research Officer at The ARF (Advertising Research Foundation), lists the following five trends in OOH advertising, topics that will be discussed in depth at The ARF’s “Maximizing OOH Impact” event on Oct. 30 in New York.

·     Inclusion of OOH viewing in television ratings. Nielsen announced earlier this year that it would leverage its Portable People Meter (PPM) technology to measure out-of-home TV viewing and then add that data to TV ratings. ESPN and others have planned to use this service. OOH viewing includes devices such as tablets and smartphones but also counts TV viewing in public places like bars and waiting rooms. Some networks have announced that they will include out-of-home viewing as part of their media currency. According to Nielsen, from January to May 2017, linear TV viewership across broadcast and cable among adults ages 18-34 increased by 8% as a result of out-of-home viewing.

·     Increased use of location-based advertising. Location-based targeting seems to be exploding, at least as measured by the number of firms offering location targeting. With this growth, users are asking for ways to validate the accuracy of the location data.

·    The world is your canvas. Outdoor advertising is not just billboards or digital display. Increasingly, we see images on cars, buses, planes and now boats. How in the world do we measure the impact of all of this?

·     Sponsorship growth. Some advertisers respond to the decline in C3 (a measure of the commercials watched both live and three days DVR playback) and proliferation of ad blockers by putting brand names and logos on athletes’ clothing.  Others use product placement. It’s an unobtrusive way of getting your message out, both on site, and on TV where events are broadcast.

·     Validation and metrics for all the above. Validation has always been a challenge. It took a long time to measure out-of-home television. How do you measure the validity of these new measures when we haven’t been able to measure  much simpler methods?

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