Updated: Digital OOH Begins To Accelerate, Place-Based Nets Continue To Dominate

(Correction: While global digital out-of-home ad spending decelerated last year, it is now on track to accelerate again, based on first quarter data released today by PQ Media. The original version of this story incorrectly reported that the market is continuing to decelerate. A correction has also been published.)
 
The once ultra hot digital out-of-home ad marketplace continued to decelerate this year, amid a wider slowdown in the U.S. and worldwide advertising economies, according to new estimates released this morning by media industry economists PQ Media.
 
While the U.S. remained the world’s largest digital out-of-home media market, PQ estimates its rate of advertising growth slowed down for the second consecutive year, expanding only 4% to 1.4 billion in 2012. A major culprit, PQ said, was the U.S. cinema advertising marketplace -- a dominant sector within digital out-of-home -- which grew at a tortoise-like pace of 0.4%.
 
“Excluding cinema, U.S. [digital place-based network] revenues increased 6.8%, driven by strong growth of transit and healthcare networks.”
 
The pace of digital place-based networks -- a subcategory within digital out-of-home that positions itself more as television than out-of-home media -- may be telling for the looming network TV upfront marketplace.
 
Worldwide digital place-based network ad spending expanded at an even faster rate -- growing 8.6% to $5.57 billion and accounting for 70% of the global digital out-of-home media marketplace, which grew 11.4% to $7.88 billion.
 
While PQ attributed the deceleration of overall digital out-of-home spending largely to macroeconomic factors, PQ President and Publisher Patrick Quinn noted that it’s time for the hyper-fragmented medium to “drive consolidation, scale, research and efficient processes, while positioning DOOH based on its targeting, flexibility and engagement.”

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