• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, March 5, 2009

Amid economic turmoil, there's some good news in the digital out-of-home video marketplace. Zoom Media & Marketing said it raised $30 million with the sale of a minority stake to ABS Capital Partners.

According to Zoom Chairman and CEO François de Gaspé Beaubien, the company will use the money to continue rolling out digital displays across its network of fitness and nightlife venues. Zoom also plans to acquire enterprises to bolster its presence in certain key categories.

To date, Zoom's digital network includes more than 2,500 venues around the U.S. and Canada--covering the top 90 U.S. DMAs, along with regular poster and billboard advertising in over 8,000 venues. Looking to the future, Zoom President Dennis Roche said the company would be "a key consolidator in the digital OOH industry," forecasting more "acquisitions and build outs over the next 18 months."

The Zoom announcement follows other signs of growth for digital out-of-home video, one of the few media arenas that has responded positively during a dismal economy. This week, Premiere Retail Networks said it would begin selling ads for outside companies in addition to its own properties.

In early February, the Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau inducted two new members: Adcentricity and Ecast. In recent months, cinema advertiser ScreenVision has re-upped and expanded its digital distribution deals with theater chains, while competitor National CineMedia introduced a new online destination, www.ncm.com, to give advertisers another way to reach movie enthusiasts.

On the measurement front, while digital outdoor suffered a setback with the end of Nielsen's PRISM project, other companies like Arbitron are stepping forward to gauge the influence of the medium, with a series of place-based and retail networks signing up for custom surveys in recent months.