APN Outdoor Group and Ooh Media to merge
APN Outdoor and Ooh Media are set to merge to create a “leading, diversified out-of-home and online media group in Australia and New Zealand”.
The merger has been announced to the ASX this morning, with the companies explaining the rationale behind the decision is to create a “long-term and diversified asset base across classic, digital and online formats”.
The merged group for FY16 would have a profit of $171m with the merger forecast to achieve cost synergies of at least $20m per annum “to be realised on a run-rate basis within two years following implementation of the merger”.
So… what happens to competition within the OOH industry now?
There’s always QMS……..
*Aldi
This is the equivalent of Coles and Woolworths merging and having Aldi left for ‘competition’
If Aldi is all that’s left for competition they’d be very worried…
An even stronger participant in the outdoor media scene will mean that out of home media will be able to provide even more competition to other forms of media. Outdoor is one of the few media that is actually benefiting from technological change. A more viable outdoor advertising company, with strong financial backing, will be able to exploit the new technology and this can only be to the benefit of advertisers.
Peter Menton
I was confused at first but it sounds like a smart move. There’ll be naysayers complaining about competition but the reality is the OOH industry now has to compete with online. They need as much scale as possible. Even the whole brief/tender process seems archaic when you get your ads into Facebook or DoubleClick in seconds. “oOhPN” will be competing with the Googles and the Facebooks, not other OOH companies.
Outdoor is what it is – as a media channel it has many attributes that Google et al don’t – google self driving cars might just help ooh – more time to look at billboards as your car drives u to work 🙂
And it begins…..
The real question isn’t “what happens to competition?”, or “will the ACCC approve the merger?”
The real question is “will the APNO Christmas hams still continue?”