Outdoor adspend poised to speed past $40bn in 2020

posterThe inexorable rise of the outdoor ad industry looks set to propel the sector ahead of newspaper adspend, with the global market forecast to hit $40.6bn (£31bn) this year.

So says a new report by GroupM, which reckons that out of home (OOH) spending will represent 6.6% of the $600bn (£457bn) worldwide advertising market in 2020.

While details of the study are patchy at best, the Financial Times reports that this year advertisers will spend about $4bn (£3bn) more on OOH than on newspapers.

By 2024, however, GroupM expects OOH to overtake spending on newspapers and magazines combined, having expanded at an annual rate of up to 4%.

The growth is being driven by new data-driven targeting and attribution techniques, as well as the rise of programmatic buying platforms.

At the last count, there were 11,024 digital screens in the UK market, 51% more than 2018. But while digital screens account for just 3% of UK sites, they pull in 48% of all outdoor revenues.

Brits now see 1.1 billion digital out-of-home ads over the course of a week, up 36% from just a year ago, according to research released last year.

At JCDecaux, digital sites account for 5% of its inventory but generate 25% of revenues; for Clear Channel digital is even more important, accounting for 60% of its revenues.

GroupM global president of business intelligence Brian Wieser told the FT: “Outdoor advertising has been resilient because it retains unique characteristics for advertisers. It helps that the medium has continued to evolve.”

Posterscope global president Stephen Whyte said that almost all growth in the sector has been driven by digital sites, while the number of traditional sites – nearly 380,180 – has been shrinking.

He added: “All the new money is coming into the digital medium. The incentive to extend the paper estate is low, while the margins on digital are high.”

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