By David Burrick, Intersection
Earlier this month, I attended the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. While the main focus of CES is not the out-of-home advertising industry, the conference has had growing importance in our industry over the past few years. It is a major gathering place for OOH buyers and sellers to kick off the year and regroup after the holidays. Moreover, while many of the technologies that debut at CES are not specifically designed for the OOH industry, there are a number of themes that have major implications on our business.
Below I have listed a few of the major trends that I took away from CES that will have material impact on our industry in 2025 and for years to come:
AI in Everything
Every large electronics company debuted products that had artificial intelligence integrations, from televisions to refrigerators to glasses. It’s clear that AI has the ability to enhance and personalize the customer experience of everyday tools.
The OOH industry has to think about how it will more deeply integrate AI into its tools that customers and consumers use. How will AI be incorporated into the workflows used to buy and sell media? How will AI be used to enhance the deployment and maintenance of OOH assets? How will AI be used to improve the consumer experience of digital kiosks and other bus shelters that OOH companies build and operate? These are all questions that every leader in our industry should be tackling now.
Improvements in Computer Vision
An offshoot of the advances in AI has been a marked improvement in computer vision tools. Cameras and software have gotten better at taking photos and processing images at scale, which has major implications for the OOH industry, given that this is a visual medium.
One interesting technology I saw was a high frames per second camera that could be mounted to the top of a vehicle and then analyze the imagery for insights. Could this be used to capture proof of performance photos in an easier manner in a large city? Could it be used to better understand impression measurement? Could it be used to track competitive advertisements running in a market? These are all new use cases of this technology for our industry.
Continued Evolution of Transit
It was hard to go anywhere in Las Vegas without seeing signs of advancement in autonomous vehicles and other new forms of transit technology. Brands like Honda and BMW debuted new vehicles designed for the age of autonomous driving. Zoox autonomous taxis were all over the place. CES attendees traveled in Teslas via The Boring Company tunnels in and around the convention center.
Transportation is a key segment of the OOH industry, with material revenue generated on traditional vehicles like buses and yellow taxis. In markets like Las Vegas, San Francisco and Los Angeles, where autonomous vehicles have been on the road for several years, we have seen reports of material shifts in preferences to these modes of transportation from traditional public transportation. As that continues to happen, how will brands integrate themselves into this new type of transit experience?
Self-Service SMB Buying Tools
One of the major announcements in the ad tech industry at CES was the announcement of a new product called Universal Ads by Comcast. This product is designed to make it easier for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB) to purchase streaming video advertising. Traditionally, the tools used to purchase this sort of inventory has been complicated and focused on a more sophisticated ad buyer/agency.
The world’s largest ad giants, Google and Facebook, have proven that SMBs will spend material amounts on advertising if these businesses are given tools that (i) make the ad buying process simpler and (ii) more easily prove the effectiveness of advertising. Comcast’s announcement is a major step in this direction for the video advertising industry.
At Intersection, we also believe strongly in this trend and have recently rolled out a similar tool that simplifies ad buying for SMBs on our OOH screens. This is a key initiative that the entire industry has to focus on in order to most effectively compete for ad dollars from vital SMB clients. OOH screens have to be as easy to buy as other forms of advertising.
The Las Vegas Conference Business is Thriving
The casinos, convention center and strip were absolutely packed at levels that felt very much like pre-pandemic times. This is great for OOH companies, like Intersection, that have media in Las Vegas, particularly in and around the hotspots of CES like the convention center.
I saw multiple tech/media brands taking advantage of this OOH media to cut through the noise of the conference and speak directly to business decision makers at the conference. I predict that this part of the OOH business – advertising around conferences/conventions – will continue to grow as audiences for these events continue to grow.
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