Terry Carmody owns Integration Media, an out of home sales firm which works closely with the IBOUSA to generate national sales. In addition Terry is co-founder of Heritage Outdoor Media which owns out of home plants in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta.
Terry how’s the national out of home market?
From everything we’ve seen and experienced, it’s been quite strong. We sell billboards predominantly and we cover large and small markets across the country and regardless of the size of the market, activity have been solid. Statics still sell quite well, but the request for digitals continues to grow and I don’t see that trend ending. Digital billboards give clients more flexibility, especially since it allows the clients to plan on a shorter time frame and avoid production costs and shipping/posting delays. Many agency people making these decisions are in the 20s and early 30s and they are used to a quicker turn around. They can plan and execute Mobile, Online and TV campaigns very quickly and they want the same speed from the OOH world.
Many locally focused independent out of home companies think they don’t need impressions. Why do impressions matter?
Impressions have always mattered at the national level, but historically not so much at the regional and local level. National buyers & their clients typically are planning large multi market campaigns. The clients are multi-million, if not multi-billion dollar entities. Everything is measured and quantified to see if their efforts were a success. They want some form of measurement, which is why clients would buy media that was often Media Rating Council accredited, such as TV, print, radio, etc. The clients were getting validated measurement, which helped them assess the success or failure of their ad campaign. The simple reason online and mobile have taken over such a large portion of national media budgets so quickly, is because they have brought even better measurement and metric reporting to their clients than legacy media. They aren’t perfect and they have had fraud & reporting issues, but the depth of the metrics was strong enough that the clients were willing to overlook the fraud. That says something about the data they were delivering and how badly the clients wanted it.
At the local level, the demand for impression and measurement is growing. Yes, there are still local clients who live in the market/town where they see the billboards they buy every day and know full well who they a reaching and we may never lose a percentage of those clients, but those same clients are now being approached by the Googles and Facebooks of the world. Those same clients who search for advertising solutions online, such as billboards, are receiving paid ads offering new ways to deploy their ad dollars and of course some of the clients are curious to try it. The OOH industry has to be prepared for that if we want to compete, which is where I think better measurement comes in. I also feel as the younger generation comes up (a generation that is very tech savvy) and they are starting businesses or are being groomed to take over the family business, they are going to strongly consider mobile and online advertising. I believe impressions and measurement will be crucial in that fight for those ad dollars.
What impressions alternatives exist for out of home companies now and how might this change in the future?
There aren’t many and Geopath is still the predominant provider of impression to the OOH industry, but there are companies that are also trying to bring measurement solutions to the OOH world. Place Exchange is the most notable. They are in the process of rolling out their PerView product, which sounds like it could change the game and bring an enormous benefit to the industry. I’ve heard that PlaceExchange is planning to submit PerView to the MRC to obtain MRC accreditation. If they are successful, the OOH industry will for the first time ever, that I’m aware of, have a measurement tool that will be on par with all other accredited media. That lack of accreditation is what has been holding the OOH industry back for years. If the clients, especially national clients, can once and for all feel confident in our measurement and can now plan their media campaigns with “apples to apples” metrics, we will see our share of the media budgets grow exponentially. I know the Independent Billboard Operators Association (the IBO) has already come to an agreement with PlaceExchange to bring the PerView product to all of its IBO members on the IBO Speedway. That will bring measurement to tens of thousands of billboards across the country that never had anything more than a DEC. For many operators, it will be like going from a rotary phone to an iPhone 14 overnight! We’re very excited to see this unfold.
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