Commentary

Ok, So When Will The Digital OOH Breakout Happen

PQ Media chief Patrick Quinn is setting the agenda for MediaPost's Digital Out-of-Home Forum in New York this morning, and he just characterized the growth of any new – successful medium – in terms of three phases: Gold rush, shakeout and breakout.

Quinn said the gold rush period ran from 2003 to 2008, and then turned into the shakeout period, with a little help from the Great Recession. Quinn said he couldn't tell exactly how long the shakeout period would be, noting that it could run from "years to decades," and adding that dozens of major digital out-of-home players have either been consolidated or shutdown in the past couple of years.

In fact, Quinn has been doling out a "dose of brutal honesty," focusing more on the challenges confronting digital out-of-home media, vs. the opportunities.

One of those has been the lack of audience measurement and metrics standards. Quinn noted that Nielsen's Fourth Screen report is the closest the industry has come to a standard, but it still lacks the kind of standardized currency data that has galvanized other ad-supported industires.

Another factor is the "alphabet soup" of trade groups and associations representing the business, some of them offering conflicting views about what digital out-of-home media actually is? Is it outdoor? Is it place-based TV? Is it mobile, experiential, etc.?

Interestingly, digital out-of-home revenues are still dominated by the biggest players – especially cinema networks. The top 10 platforms currently represent about 72% of all digital OOH revenues. And while cinema is the Big Kahuna, Quinn noted that office networks have been the fastest growing, rising 25.6% last year to $250 million.

Based on PQ's estimates of first quarter 2011 "pacings," Quin said the overall digital out-of-home market will expand 16.7% to $2.4 billion this year. Sounds like a breakout to me.

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