• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, August 11, 2010

The good news is that the second quarter of 2010 may have been the biggest quarter yet for the burgeoning digital out-of-home media marketplace. The bad news is that advertisers and agencies are still loath to commit their ad budgets to the medium until the very last minute, and some major categories, especially consumer packaged goods and food marketers, are still taking a largely wait-and-see approach to the medium. Those are some of the findings to come out of the second quarter edition of the Digital Out-of-Home Market Review from digital out-of-home media aggregator Adcentricity.

"The second quarter was our biggest booking quarter yet," said Rob Gorrie, president and founder, of Adcentricity, which has been tracking the volume for four quarters, but began reporting it publicly with the first quarter of 2010. While the report is based on Adcentricity's orders, Gorrie said it's a reasonable proxy for the overall digital out-of-home industry, because the company represents most of the key segments of the marketplace.

Despite the effects of the economic recession, Gorrie said the digital out-of-home marketplace continued to expand, and that the spending appears to have shifted from traditional out-of-home budgets to TV advertising budgets.

The big categories driving the market's expansion continue to be automotive, telecommunications and financial services, but Gorrie said other key categories are beginning to emerge, particularly political and "government" spending, and pharmaceutical.

And while packaged goods, and food and beverages remain nascent categories, Gorrie said the industry is starting to see more interest from big marketers such as Coca-Cola Co., Mentos, Cadbury and Kraft, which are doing more "evaluation" and planning around the medium, if not yet buying it at scale.

Gorrie said Adcentricity expects that to change over the next year, especially the latter half of 2011, but that for the time being, digital out-of-home budgeting will remain close to the vest, with advertisers committing at the last possible minute.