DOOH aggregator and strategy firm ADCENTRICITY on Monday released its inaugural quarterly Digital Out-of-Home Market Review — what it calls "a compilation of market data and insight best leveraged as a reference guide for agencies and marketers seeking a better understanding of the DOOH advertising sector."
The report is intended to be the first of ongoing quarterly reports tracking ad spending in the DOOH space, and the initial survey of the field is encouraging, says ADCENTRICITY president Rob Gorrie.
"The thing that's most encouraging from our side of things is that the industries that are starting to spend in the space — in terms of the big guys of automotive, telecommunications and financial services — we're starting to see them mirror the exact spending patterns that happen in traditional media and online," Gorrie said. "So it's starting to look like the medium is maturing…It's really encouraging and bodes well for growth into the future."
In announcing the report, ADCENTRICITY noted some key findings:
- Networks operating in retail venues are dominating DOOH spending and following the same patterns as traditional media spending, with automotive, financial services and telecommunications by far the biggest categories.
- Packaged goods and entertainment brands are not yet moving as aggressively into the DOOH space, owing to traditional caution, demands for extensive testing, and with entertainment, a need for more education on how good creative will overcome cases where audio is not used.
- Retail locations (grocery, pharmacy, c-store, coffee shops) were the winners by actual spending through 2009. Of the 70 environment types available across 100 networks, the top six categories accounted for approximately 69 percent of all media dollars and they were overwhelmingly retail.
- While mainstream agencies have DOOH on their radar, and are allocating dollars, digital agencies haven't yet adopted or fully understood this medium's capabilities. Ironically, there's a digital divide where there should be a natural fit.
The report, which is available online at no charge, is the agency's attempt to start putting out real numbers that provide some kind of transparency and overview to the industry, Gorrie says, adding that hopefully the second quarterly report will continue to show an upward trend. "We're seeing stats that are encouraging that are less anecdotal and more empirical," he said. "It is a slice of the business, but it is something that can be taken as a representative sample set of what's being spent out there."
ADCENTRICITY'S research and organizational experience also provide some insights into what likely needs to happen for the DOOH sector to continue its ascent, Gorrie says.
"There are two sides to that coin," he said. "Number one, the brand and network community needs to understand that it is a cyclical thing, and there is no hockey stick effect that happens in this business.
"And you get to the point where you have leaders and champions in the brand and agency community who buy in, but they are few and far between. Some people are still skeptical of the medium despite the great numbers that are coming back, and that takes time and education and evangelism."
Also, while the trend is upward and the signs mostly positive, there are negatives, he says.
"One bad peach spoils the whole batch, and there is a significant amount of revenue that we have seen evaporate from this space because of the actions of one network when they were doing a deal with somebody, and that type of stuff has to stop," he said.
"We need to work together to make sure that we're taking the kinks out of this business. We have enough barriers to entry without making problems for ourselves."
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