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The Out of Home (OOH) industry has shown strong recovery following the pandemic and subsequent economic challenges, with significant investment in digital and impressive creative efforts in both digital and classic formats. How do you foresee the next five years unfolding for the industry?
I’m very optimistic about the future of OOH, both in the near and long-term. Across the media landscape, I see considerable challenges for other media, including issues related to trust, ad-fraud, audience engagement, and environmental impact. These obstacles are already affecting spending. However, OOH tells a different story. The medium is now stronger than it was a few years ago and continues to improve, with more and higher quality screens, better creative work, advanced technology, data enhancements, and increased opportunities for consumers to engage meaningfully. Moreover, many consumers are skilled at avoiding ads, which poses a challenge for advertisers, but OOH provides a solution that is difficult for consumers to ignore.
There’s been much discussion about OOH being stuck at a 5% share of the global ad market. Is this a concern? How do you think the industry can increase its share?
Considering the points I’ve made, this should be somewhat concerning. However, it’s important to understand the context. Over the past decade, the surge in audience reach and market access through digital media has absorbed all the growth in advertising spend, with a significant focus on performance media. Given this, it’s not surprising that OOH’s share hasn’t grown, despite numerous reasons it should. However, the focus on performance media and digital growth has slowed significantly in recent years, while OOH has seen rising audience numbers and an improved product.
I believe and hope there will be a reassessment of OOH’s role in the media mix, leading to an increase in market share. We’re already witnessing this reassessment from many clients and media agencies. Planners and buyers frequently mention that “not all impacts are the same” and refer to the importance of the attention economy and the quality of engagement. This perspective is not only reassuring but also a sound strategy that I believe will gain more traction.
Programmatic buying is increasingly influencing OOH. Do you see this as a positive development, or does it undervalue high-impact media like Ocean?
The answer lies in the question! Programmatic is undeniably a positive development for OOH, offering buyers more choice, better targeting, and adding a new dimension to our medium. There is excellent work being done on the buy-side, especially by OOH specialists, who are introducing new clients to the medium and driving business results. When done well, programmatic OOH clearly adds value to our industry.
However, there are misconceptions and some incorrect opinions. I still hear programmatic OOH being equated with digital display in certain circles, which is a false comparison. The logic seems to be that since online display has driven growth, making our medium resemble online as much as possible might attract billings. But these are distinct media used in different ways. While using data triggers to serve ads in DOOH is effective, it’s essential to remember that OOH is, and always will be, a one-to-many medium. This characteristic may have been out of favor during the last decade of hyper-targeting and personalization, but it remains a strength of our medium. The ability to communicate with an entire community simultaneously, as seen in campaigns like the recent Nationwide effort, is invaluable and should be celebrated in OOH.
High-impact media is becoming increasingly scarce and should be valued accordingly. There’s no comparison between a shopper viewing a brand message on a 55-square-meter full-motion digital screen before entering Westfield and seeing the same message on their phone, or on a lower-quality small-format OOH screen in a different environment. High-quality media in prime locations has always commanded a premium, and rightly so.
Recently, there’s been a noticeable decline in the number of OOH specialist agencies, at least in some markets. Is this an issue for the medium? Do mainstream media agencies possess adequate expertise?
I don’t see this as a problem for the medium; rather, it’s an evolution reflecting how OOH is planned and bought. The critical factor is that specialization exists—the expertise and experience necessary to ensure clients’ budgets are optimally spent. I’ve seen no signs of this expertise diminishing—quite the opposite. For our medium to grow, OOH must be considered part of the overall media mix, not just in isolation. For this to occur, OOH practitioners need to be as close to clients, strategists, and implementation planners as possible. I observe this within OOH teams in media agencies and among independent OOH specialists.
Who are the individuals and what are the OOH campaigns that have influenced your career?
Most of my career has been spent on the agency side at MediaCom, where I had the privilege of meeting experts from every medium. From an early stage, I’ve noticed that the common trait among the OOH community is “Passion.” There has always been a strong sense of pride in the medium, a commitment to creating outstanding work, and a drive to promote the industry. This passion was evident externally in leaders like Tim Bleakley (now my boss at Ocean), Spencer Berwin at JCDecaux, Richard Bon at Clear Channel, and Naren Patel at Primesight.
I also saw this passion internally with Gill Reid and the MediaCom OOH team, whose enthusiasm both inspired and, at times, intimidated media planners. Now that I’ve transitioned to OOH, I continue to see this passion from our customers and competitors. I believe that to succeed and enjoy your career, you must be passionate about it, and what I observe around me today gives me great confidence in the future.
Regarding OOH campaigns, there are too many to mention, but if I had to choose one, it would be the collaboration between Balenciaga and Fortnite showcased on Piccadilly Lights and in Times Square. This was one of the early examples of DeepScreen, and the 3D creative work was exceptional. What truly made it stand out, however, was the enormous amount of social media traction it generated, delivering immense value to the client. While we always knew that iconic OOH was widely shared, this campaign, which sparked a rush of creativity, made us rethink our approach. It changed our business, leading us to develop in-house capabilities in design, creative consultancy, videography, and social listening, and to invest in research that quantifies social traction, showing that this approach works across various large-format DOOH. It’s creative, relevant, and impossible to ignore—a perfect example of the power of OOH.