Several Factors, Market Conditions, Can Make Global OOH/DOOH Business Thrive: WOO

March 14, 2024 by Dave Haynes

The World Out of Home Organization just wrapped up a three-day Africa-focused forum in gorgeous Cape Town, with WOO President Tom Goddard laying out in an opening talk several ways that OOH/DOOH media companies can thrive in a hyper-competitive ad planning and selling market.

1. Digital Transformation – improving presentation standards, delivering 100% illumination and reducing lead times to hours instead of weeks.
2. Media Ownership Consolidation – Statistics clearly show how consolidated markets win a larger share of ad expenditure.
3. Better measurement – which builds trust, improves buyer confidence, compares well to other media and enables a common trading currency.
4. Automation – which improves efficiency and enables Programmatic trading.
5. Value for money – OOH compares favourably with all other media in its reach and impact. Better-funded, more unified trade bodies are key to getting this particular message across.
6. Winning the contest with online – online, now 60% of the global ad market, is bedevilled by fears over brand safety, fraud, and fake news, the latter magnified in an election year across the world. This creates an enormous opportunity for a trusted medium like OOH.

Goddard also told the crowd at the first-ever Africa Forum that global OOH revenue is forecasted to to exceed 2022’s $36.8bn, a full recovery from the pandemic. He noted that African OOH ad spend market share was ahead of most other regions, but digital penetration is still far below the 30-40% norm in other regions.

Goddard suggested the opportunity for digital is huge, but so are the challenges of 54 countries on the continent, and some 2,000 languages.

Globally, Goddard suggested, a big challenge for OOH, aside from the seemingly remorseless rise of digital, remains sustainability. Major brands and media agencies have set fixed goals to reach carbon net zero by 2030 and not only do they expect media suppliers to follow suit, but many have also stated they will only buy media from Ad Net Zero-rated suppliers. That’s why WOO has set up a special task force and a dedicated website to help members achieve this goal.