The out-of-home (OOH) media industry industry is expected to bounce back after being smashed during the pandemic, according to forecasts in PwC's Entertainment and Media Outlook for 2020-2024.
The report says audience targeting, programmatic trading ability and the sophistication of measurement capability are central to driving future demand.
PwC forecasts that advertising revenue will fall 44.3% in 2020, driven primarily by the April and June quarter, but will take off next year:
"Despite significant environmental challenges as a direct result of COVID-19, the OOH industry is well positioned to bounce back," says PwC.
The recent growth within OOH has been heavily reliant on digitisation of assets, which stimulated an increase in both supply and demand.
“Australia’s OOH providers have invested heavily in their digital OOH infrastructure, aided by decreasing manufacturing costs for LED displays, which have made the economics of operating digital out-of-home (DOOH) installations steadily more favourable,” says PwC.
“Given the market is heavily digitised, this lever for growth will not be as effective in the future as it has been in the past.”
PwC says the key to the reboot of the OOH industry will be advancements in audience targeting, and the ability to trade inventory programmatically.
"While DOOH technology currently allows for more sophisticated targeting based on factors such as time, weather and context, a focus on business processes and sales platforms is required to fully take advantage of these new developments," says PwC.
"Programmatic OOH presents a strong opportunity for marketers to reach a more qualified audience in real time, and key players are best placed to develop strong programmatic offerings by capitalising on their economies of scale granted through
previous consolidation within the industry.
"It too, however, requires a focus on business process and technological advancement to enable growth. The success of the OOH industry in capturing incremental investment through advancements in programmatic trading will be contingent on its observation and mitigation of issues faced by the internet industry."
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