On Tuesday Insider wrote about the hype over driverless cars. Insider thinks driverless car adoption will be a slow process which will take 25 years. It will alter but not kill the out of home business. Here’s why.
- People in driverless cars look out the window. When Insider takes Uber to the airport he checks his phone and talks on the phone and looks outside the window. Insider is in a driverless vehicle and he still looks outside. He may not look out the window as much as when he’s driving but he still looks out the window. Have you looked at a bus or a train. People still glance outside at their surroundings.
- Out of home thrives in urban environments where fewer people own cars. Think London or New York City. Lots of people use taxis or subways or uber. They have a driverless car experience in the sense that they are getting from place to place without driving the car themselves. Yet the out of home business is vibrant. Will Times Square go away because we are driving driverless cars? Don’t think so.
- Pricing may fall. If you are pricing based on impressions and impressions go down because people aren’t looking out the window as much then pricing may need to go down. But it won’t go to zero.
What should you do to prepare for autonomous cars?
- Monitor the autonomous vehicle industry. Put autonomous cars into your google news feed and make a point of reading what you see. Insider is going to start providing weekly updates on the Autonomous vehicle business.
- Shift your leases to % of revenue. This allows your lease costs to fall if you have to reset your rates at certain locations due to reduced impressions.
- Take another look transit, city center, town square locations. People on foot notice out of home.
- Think about ways billboards can interact with smartphones. If smartphone use is up then billboards which send tailored messages to smartphones or billboards which include small data cells may have a place.
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