Outlook for outdoor
in 2010: Lots better
Advertising should pop back up into positive territory
By Toni Fitzgerald
Dec 21, 2009
Like every other medium, outdoor advertising saw steep spending declines in 2009, battered by the recession and greater caution on the part of advertisers wary of investing in all but the most proven media.
But 2010 will bring more changes to outdoor than most other media. The industry will be poring over the first full year of the Traffic Audit Bureau’s Eyes On Out of Home Media Measurement data, which tracks who actually sees billboards.
It will be implementing more environmentally conscious platforms, such as eco-friendly bulletins and billboard lighting that consumes less energy.
And the rollout of digital signage will continue, everywhere from roadsides to doctors' offices to stadiums to gas stations, giving advertisers greater flexibility than static signage and inviting more interaction with passersby via mobile elements.
These improvements and innovations should help the outdoor sector recover from what's been a brutal 2009, with ad spending falling 17 percent or more in the first three quarters.
Magna's chief forecaster, Brian Wieser, sees the outdoor sector achieving essentially flat growth in 2010 after falling 13 percent this year.
"I think we bottomed out in second quarter this year," says Stephen Freitas, chief marketing officer at the Outdoor Advertising Association of America. "It started coming back in third quarter, and that uptick will continue into next year. Anecdotally, we've heard some members say things are looking stronger."
The Eyes On data will undoubtedly be one of the most important stories of the coming year. TAB began releasing the data in June, more than five years after the project's inception, and it will allow media buyers and planners to determine not only how many people see the country's roughly 500,000 billboards but also what demographic groups those people belong to.
Under the old system there was very little differentiation between billboards in the same market. For example, a similar number of views would be attributed to a billboard on an interstate and one posted at an underpass. But in fact, very different groups of people were seeing those signs.
Eyes On allows media people to differentiate between those groups, looking at demographic data for each individual billboard.
"We'll be transitioning to the new currency, the operators will be using that new currency starting Jan. 1," says Freitas.
Also this year, expect digital signage to become even more prevalent across the country, including controversial digital billboards.
This year saw the Los Angeles and El Paso city councils vote to ban the boards, though the mayor later overturned the El Paso decision. Objections to the signs include concerns over highway safety and urban blight.
Still, that has not stopped their nationwide rollout. Some 1,800 roadside digital billboards now dot the country, and the OAAA says that 39 states allow them.
This latest generation of digital signs is increasingly adding mobile elements, drawing passersby to interact with the medium as a way to really sell the advertiser's message.
Finally, as the outdoor industry looks for new ways to attract advertisers, it is embracing the trendy green movement, something it began earlier this year with the introduction of a recyclable poster panel. In the coming year, the OAAA hopes to have perfected similar technology for bulletins and introduce new lighting that requires less energy to illuminate billboards.
"We're looking at wind and solar techniques," Freitas says. "Any technological innovations that help reduce energy consumption."
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