• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, July 25, 2011

Media buyers and planners are embracing digital out-of-home video as a way to reach consumers who are increasingly on the go and less accessible via other, traditional media channels, according to a new study from eMarketer.

That translates into large projected increases in ad spending for the burgeoning new medium over the next couple of years.

The proportion of media planners who said they include digital out-of-home video in their marketing plans jumped from 65.3% in 2010 to 75.5% this year. That's on course to reach 86.3% in 2012, according to survey results from the Digital Place-based Advertising Association cited in the eMarketer study.

Most DO spending is still coming from the broader outdoor category, with 54.2% of respondents saying they shifted money from traditional out-of-home, but DO is making inroads on TV: 43.8% of the respondents said they are shifting spending from TV budgets, compared to 22.9% who said they shifted money from online budgets.

Some 19.8% of respondents said they didn't shift spending from another category for DO.

For the outdoor medium as a whole, eMarketer is predicting that total advertising revenues will grow from $6.1 billion in 2010 to $6.4 billion this year, reaching $7.6 billion by 2015 -- and attributes much of this growth to the rapid expansion of DO.

Separately, PQ Media projects that spending on DO advertising in the U.S. will increase 16.7% from $2.07 billion in 2010 to $2.42 billion this year. Putting the PQ Media and eMarketer figures together, DO spending could rise from 33.9% of all outdoor spending in 2010 to 37.8% this year.