Latest Market Study: Out-Of-Home outperforms

IPG Mediabrands’ centralised intelligence resource Magna, and Rapport, IPG Mediabrands’ global specialist network agency in the Out-of-Home (OOH) sector, have just published a brand new report on global OOH media.

The report reveals the state and trends of OOH in 70 countries (total OOH spend, by segment, digital vs static), including in-depth analyses and insights for the top 20 markets.

Key findings from the report indicate that APAC is now the largest OOH region with almost $13 billion in sales in 2018, ahead of EMEA (close to $9bn) and North America (close to $8 billion). APAC is also the region with the highest OOH share (7.8% on average vs 5.6% globally).

The OOH market in Malaysia is worth $130 million. This represents a high market share (15%) due to heavy road traffic and OOH expansion to new sites. In 2018, OOH revenues grew by +10%, thanks to economic growth and the general elections.

Managing Director of Rapport Malaysia, Hor Jian Tsin commented, “We see exciting times ahead for Malaysian OOH, especially as advertisers embrace new ways to use OOH to influence their business results when coupled with technology,”

The report indicates that while other traditional media sectors are struggling to reach consumers in this digital age, OOH advertising is leveraging technology to innovate, remain relevant and attract new advertisers.

As a result, OOH is the only traditional format that has experienced consistent growth in global advertising sales in the last ten years.

 “It’s great that the Malaysian OOH market is keeping abreast with global trends as we’ve also seen an explosion of Digital OOH inventory in recent years, coupled with growing consciousness amongst industry stakeholders on the possibilities of harnessing tech and data to improve OOH audience measurement,” said Jian Tsin.

The report reveals that digital OOH still represents a tiny fraction of total OOH spend in Malaysia, so the potential for growth is significant (considering that the global average is 17%). By 2023, digital will represent not quite 9% of total OOH spend, which will still significantly trail the global average.

Jian Tsin added, “As the usage of digital OOH increases, addressing other issues like ad viewability and audience data integrity will go a long way in increasing advertisers’ confidence in the medium for the long run. At the same time, static inventory still has an important role to play as not all locations are viable for digital. We do foresee a rationalisation of static sites in the future, as media vendors consolidate and reduce poor performing sites, seeking to prioritise yield per site over total inventory size.”

The global report further states that there are a number of factors explaining why OOH outperforms the rest of traditional media so consistently over time and across markets in the last nine years, one of which is creativity. Both static and digital OOH media attract some of the best creative work in advertising and the rise of digital has not reduced or diverted talent from static creative. In advertising creative competitions, old-fashioned static posters continue to win a lot of awards.

Bala Pomaleh, CEO of IPG Mediabrands Malaysia said, “OOH presents a huge creative opportunity to cut through campaigns using clever OOH messaging. There are many great examples all over the world on powerful messaging, and advertisers should consider customised creative briefs to leverage OOH contextually. The fact remains that OOH is a blank canvas that allows creative agencies to test the boundaries on art and innovation.”

Michael Cooper, Global CEO of Rapport said, “There has never been a more exciting time in the OOH (out-of-home) industry. The industry has exploited all the benefits of evolving digital technologies, but retains a unique geographical footprint in a way that no other medium can. Spotify, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Hulu and all the tech companies you are excited about, have dramatically increased their spending in OOH advertising, across almost every world market in 2018, with very good reason”.

Download Highlights of report here.