‘Far beyond the advertising screen’: what will OOH look like in 10 years?

Out-of-home is designed, by default, to be part of everyone’s everyday lives; to exist in locations where people are. It’s the only medium that has its own infrastructure. With the rollout of 5G connectivity and smart cities, we’re going to see advertising that communicates with audiences in a more intuitive way, is more intuitive to the environment and feeds data back into a much bigger system to be self-improving. This will take us far beyond the advertising screen. Look at smart lampposts and other things that have infrastructure built into them creating new wifi spots. It’s all so exciting.

Nicole Lonsdale, chief client officer, Kinetic

I don’t think we should start preparing for a Minority Report future. That’s not the nature of the channel. In five or 10 years’ time, the fundamentals of marketing will remain important. What will be grabbing headlines even more is OOH’s reach. But that will be refined.

We talk about ‘mass personalization’ in OOH: using data (which will only become richer) to add more contextual layers and more value in terms of what it gives back to consumers. But the channel is not going to change so fundamentally. It’s not going to be one person walking down the street being served a piece of copy just to them. It doesn’t work in that way. OOH is about herd behavior; it reaches groups of people. We can’t lose sight of that; that’s its strength and it’s something that no other channel can offer.

Pavel Popov, chief executive officer, Hypnogram (part of Invnt Group)

I can’t wait to see integrations with AR technology: glasses, lenses and other concepts that re-imagine how the world could look. If we all have these glasses, how beautiful could outdoor advertisements look? Sometimes it’ll be just for fun; sometimes it could be useful, directing us to where we’re going within an ad, for example. This technology will be adopted on a mass level, and it will provide a great new tool for us to create beautiful and meaningful experiences.

Savannah Westbrock, account strategy director, Coegi

I expect to see programmatic OOH continue to grow, as well as AR and VR. But in the industry, the work that will make headlines is the work that cracks the measurement piece. We’ve gotten so accustomed to having more of that one-to-one lens in programmatic OOH, but it’s our responsibility to respect consumer privacy, taking on the lesson we’ve learned in programmatic and social. We need to make sure that we’re setting ourselves up in a responsible way to still drive those results that our brands are looking for.

Anup Daji, vice-president, Wasserman

The brands that can really create meaningful connections with consumers are going to win. Technological innovations will accelerate that at the speed of light. As the tech and its innovations become more cost-effective, we’ll see an uptick in interactive and personalized OOH brand connections.

If you treat OOH as an experience that fosters levels of personalization, relevance, delight, reward and utility, you’re going to drive engagement that’s going to foster a meaningful connection with the consumer. OOH has plenty of runway to do that.

Sulmaan Ahmad, head of strategy, TRO

For as long as human beings congregate in the real world, OOH will push the boundaries.

The trend toward responsive, personalized and contextualized communication can be very powerful in entertainment value, utility value and advertising value. We’re on a one-way track in our ability to capture and use data and that will translate into real-world advertising in ways that will be incredibly powerful – not just from an efficiency point of view, but in creative too.