OUT DOOR BOUNTN
T he out-of-home (OOH) industry has been going from strength-tostrength, growing at a pace that nearly equals that of digital advertising over the last year. In the latest Standard Media Index insights, outdoor grew 22.2 percent over the previous year, compared to digital’s 22.6 percent growth. Of course, digital is at the heart of the industry’s renewed vigour, but that’s the result of more than just the obvious appearance of a plethora of large and small format digital billboards in recent years.
It’s also down to steadfast investment and innovation in the digital back-end, including bringing digital tools to bear on one of the biggest challenges for the New Zealand industry: audience measurement. In totality, these improvements have been recognised and rewarded by the market, with spend growing healthily.
New Zealand advertisers spent $118 million on OOH advertising in 2016, according to the most recent ASA statistics, up from $95 million the year before. More importantly, the industry has gained market share. While television and newspapers lost ground, OOH grew its slice of the media pie to 4.6 percent, which is close to industry body OMANZ’s five percent target. Chairman Wayne Chapman says it’s looking at shifting the goal posts further out.
The first factor in OOH’s renaissance is digital outdoor; the engine primarily driving growth in the industry thanks to advertiser interest piqued by the new formats on offer. As an example of that, Brendon Cook, CEO of Australia-based oOh! Media, says
