"The Future is Here for Outdoor Advertising - Smartphones, Geo-tagging, NFC and many more"

In Oct 2015, a Sydney Morning Herald published a business section article with the headlines - Don't rush to digital too fast, GroupM warns advertisers. It quoted GroupM chief investment officer Sebastian Rennie:
Advertisers and media buyers should not devote too much of their budgets to digital advertising despite the rush of marketing dollars into online advertising, GroupM chief investment officer Sebastian Rennie warns....Mr Rennie called on advertisers to remember the important role that traditional media such as television play in their campaigns... Mr Rennie said digital and out-of-home advertising have been big areas of growth for GroupM. "I think out-of-home is having a bit of resurgence at the moment; there's a lot of interest in the medium. As an overall channel, they're doing a lot of work in terms of digitising their inventory and that's creating new opportunities for advertisers and setting up the ground work for consumers being able to interact with outdoor, which could potentially become the shopfront of the future."
The same article also quoted Mr Sorrell, who is chief executive of WPP that:
GroupM is pushing aggressively to get a measurement of video viewership that extends across seven days on all screens because measurement standards on digital video, particularly Facebook, were "ludicrous" when being measured against traditional TV. Facebook defines a video view as a view of three seconds or more. "That, I would say, is ludicrous in relation to the hurdles that a traditional TV viewer, or newspaper readership, has to meet," Mr Sorrell said. "Measurement standards have to be raised, particularly for online. The pendulum is moving back, in some respects, not all respects, to traditional media and giving them a little bit of a boost and potential advantage."

Youtube video summary of the Bloomberg article - How Much of Your Audience is Fake?

I do not have to authority to delve too much into measurements of online marketing / digital marketing measurements, but an expose article by Bloomberg Business in 2015 Sept - How Much of Your Audience is Fake? sheds a lot of light into how [fake traffic has become a commodity] and the unethical aspects such as the lack use of traffic regulation, the use bots and poorly defined measurements.

I digress.

The main point of this blog post that excites me to share is how quickly outdoor advertising is coming together with technology to create the most engaging and total consumer experience of the 5 senses. While there are a lot of "fake people" around (myself included), there is not much bots walking around the streets now. Traffic count in the WORK LIVE and PLAY outdoor environment is still real. Outdoor advertising works.

Enterprise Innovation under its CMO Innovation article in 2014 - New Zealand smartphones connecting with outdoor advertising  and  STOPPRESS New Zealand wrote an article in 2014 'Eyes up' smartphone owners a prime target for outdoor published statistics about how "New Zealand's 1.5 million smartphone owners are more likely to notice out-of-home advertising in shopping centers, on a supermarket trolley, on a bus, tram, or taxi than those without a smartphone, a new research from Roy Morgan research shows.... “It turns out smartphone owners aren’t just walking around with their heads down, peering at screens. Smartphone owners notice more outdoor advertising than others, suggesting that the integration of Outdoor and Digital in marketing campaigns could indeed provide a promising advantage for marketers. New ‘geo-tagging’ or location-specific targeted campaigns are examples of these," said Pip Elliott, General Manager, Roy Morgan Research NZ."

Geo-tagging is going to be one of the best ways to merge the consumer experience of getting relevant information that the audience chooses at a time and place where it makes the most difference to them.

Vintage Coca Cola Advertising

Geo-tagging also allows marketers to have a more efficient marketing execution and finally, advertising goes back to our more altruistic portrayal - advertising is not some irritating nag for us to buy buy, advertising is a public message that offers the receiver a timely message to take an action to actualise a want or need.

Other upcoming technologies that are boosting the growth of outdoor advertising includes NFC, RIFD, and many more. Here's a tag of all NFC related launches in the world of outdoor advertising at NFC World.

According to Roy Morgan Research in 2015 Apr in this article Indonesian mobile phone owners more likely to notice outdoor advertising,
And although you might assume they’re too unaware, with heads down looking down at screens, Indonesia’s 140 million mobile phone users—especially the 60 million with a smartphone—are actually much more likely to notice out-of-home advertising. Three quarters of smartphone owners see street banner advertising during the week (74%), compared with 69% of non-smart mobile owners and just 61% of Indonesians without a mobile phone at all. Smartphone owners are also the mobile group most likely to see posters (54%), billboards (54%) cigarette shop ads (49%) or neon signs (36%).


As digital advertising and mobile advertising growth with the proliferation of smart phones and data speeds, outdoor advertising is definitely growing along side this trend which is here to stay.   

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