Your billboards are going digital, and getting connected

These days, out-of-home (OOH) media ads or billboards are usually digital and can be animated to a certain degree. However, they’re not really part of the “digital advertising” world and not really “connected” to the internet and the world around it.

However, all that is about to change, and here’s the big idea that the industry is toying with:

If billboards, on the streets, above shops and buildings, and outside malls, are being converted from digital, standalone units, to a digitally connected ecosystem, it could transform how it operates.

Add to that the ability to turbocharge these billboards with sensors, making them part of a city’s IoT infrastructure, and you open up unlimited possibilities as far as monitoring and targeting your ads is concerned.

As a result, the global digital OOH market is expected to exceed more than US$5 billion by 2022 at an annual rate of 10 percent as a result of the boost it will receive from programmatic advertising.

According to MarketWatch, a new report by Market Research Engine states that the major driving factors of global digital OOH market are increased spending on programmatic advertising, increasing focus on business intelligence and rising market competitiveness and technological Innovations in display technologies.

And although digital units account for only 5 percent of the global OOH inventory, they already generate 14 percent of total advertising revenues.

In fact, the digital units now account for 30 percent of revenues in some markets like the UK and Australia, and the global share is predicted to grow to 24 percent globally by 2021.

Speaking about the UK, digital OOH units was predicted to hit 50 percent of all outdoor revenue last year, while the number of digital screens in the country increased from 2,056 in 2009 to over 17,000.

Obviously, advertisers and advertising asset owners around the world are working hard to go digital quickly – and they need to do everything they can because the next-gen OOH revolution is coming.

When 5G gets here and when IoT really becomes commonly used in self-driven or autonomous vehicles, the data generated will help passengers see the right ads, at the right time, and in the right place. It’ll be a marketer’s dream come true.

The shopping cart that follows you via retargeting ads throughout the internet will be able to follow you out in the real world. That’s the future, and it’s coming really fast.