Ekaterina Grosheva via Unsplash
Agencies and brands continue to take advantage of shorter buying cycles with last-minute activations, QMS chief sales officer Tim Murphy told AdNews.
However, OOH is starting to see brands open up to longer campaigns even while many parts of the advertising landscape feel a short-market.
Some agencies and brands are booking more strategic, large-scale executions and long-term planning.
“There's more money being written in the month than ever before, that will only continue to increase as transaction efficiencies, through programmatic and advanced trading, further encourage that,” Murphy said.
“So yes, [the short market] is not going anywhere, there will be clients who absolutely embrace the shortness of the buy market, and there are others who are trying to be more planned than ever, doing more strategic, big scale sort of execution and impactful work.”
But as the marketplace becomes more digitised, nearly 80% of all revenue in the sector is on digital assets, shortness will be encouraged further, Murphy said.
“We're seeing both play out. It's definitely not a six week sort of trading market anymore.
“It's either months or moments, it's a really planned out execution or within the month, nothing really between, which is definitely not as much in between as it used to be.”
In particular, there is a large appetite for 3DOOH and The City of Sydney areas around special events, seeing QMS’ premium assets being sold out month on month.
“Our 3DOOH Lonsdale St, Melbourne, location is booked out long term because of the thirst for creative takeovers,” Murphy said.
“But there’s not a lot of supply for 3DOOH as these large scale sites are ideal in pedestrian based traffic zones or very slow moving traffic zones - which are less often available locations to secure.”
For smaller formats, The City of Sydney areas are in high demand through special events such as Mardi Gras and Chinese New Year, the network is particularly selling out from brands who want to be associated with those particular areas or special community moments.
In contrast to other categories, OOH is in a healthy spot with the market growing over 8% last year to $1.301.8 billion in 2024.
Murphy expects similar levels of growth, if not more probably heading towards low double digit growth across the sector.
But that drives a lot of expectations on the business and the major players to continue to enhance the offering by investing in technology, assets, locations, data and creativity, Murphy said.
“I think 2025 will be a great year with 10% plus growth for the sector, and that holds in good stead for capturing more of that overall share of spend which is sitting around 15% of the agency market,” Murphy said.
“Around 7 or 8% of total ad spend is going to OOH here in Australia. But there's a lot of reasons why that will continue to sort of get towards 10% plus which is really exciting.
How did QMS increase City of Sydney screens by tenfold?
The City of Sydney network covers 33 suburbs including the CBD, spans 26 square kilometres and reaches 2.6 million people weekly.
QMS took over the contract in 2020 and has increased the digital capability of the network by ten - this was made possible by being more than just a commercial advertising partner but to also equally be a utility partner, Murphy said.
QMS’ also recently won Transport for NSW contract which includes nine of Sydney’s digital out of home assets, including the overbridge on Cremorne’s Military Road.
“Our role is not only to provide a communication platform for advertisers and brands, but to create a better experience for citizens that live, work and travel in that area,” Murphy said.
“The whole ecosystem is changing and breathing all the time and our communication platform has to be able to move with it.”
QMS is constantly working with the City to improve the network, for example considering what news to display, keeping up with cleaning and maintaining screens, even how the network can help in an emergency and where to add more screens.
“We are now installing content space on the automated public toilets through the whole city - these content spaces are not necessarily advertising spaces, it might be about promoting upcoming events, messaging for local businesses, whatever it might be,” Murphy said.
“It's also about understanding the stakeholder, so if there are brands or executions that don't align with the values of the City we need to be entirely empathetic and understanding of that and have processes in place that offer them the confidence for us to control that situation.
“The City is so proud of their environment and we are as proud of the role that we're playing in it.”
QMS’ big focus currently is working with agency and advertising partners to showcase the new City of Sydney network.
QMS is currently hosting a partnership program which takes clients from all around Australia into the City to experience the marketplace.
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