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Outdoor industry launches assault for more ad revenue with new ‘one-stop hub’ for all buying

Charmaine Moldrich

Moldrich

The outdoor industry is making an aggressive push to grow its share of advertising spend with the Outdoor Media Association (OMA) announcing it is building a “one-stop hub” for buying and selling out-of-home advertising across all formats in the country.

OMA CEO Charmaine Moldrich has previously told Mumbrella she is aiming to boost the outdoor industry’s annual ad revenues to $1bn, and said the Automated Transaction Platform will “harmonise” the industry, and is supported by all the major outdoor companies as well as the advertiser industry bodies the AANA and the Media Federation of Australia.

However phase one of the project, which is slated to launch in 2016, will not include the ability to trade programmatically when it first launches.

It is hoped automating processes in one place for media buyers will encourage them to spend more on the medium, which is now the third most purchased medium after TV and digital by media agencies according to Standard Media Index figures for the first quarter of the year.

In March the OMA updated its Measurement of Visibility and Exposure (MOVE) measurement metric, five years after its launch, hinting automation was just around the corner.

The OMA represents the majority of the outdoor industry with members including APN Outdoor, Adshel, JC Decaux, Ooh Media, Goa and Torch Media.

On what the new platform will do for outdoor companies Moldrich said it will make it easier to buy and sell, delivering clients richer information on what out-of-home delivers.

Outdoor Media Association CMYK“We want to provide agencies and clients rich information which we believe we help get OOH on more [media] plans. While the ATP is being built to create efficiencies through automation it is our intention to use it to grow our market share by proving to strategists and planners that OOH delivers the audiences for advertisers,” she said.

“Making it easier to buy and sell is just one part of the equation. We know our audiences are growing, at a time when other traditional media channels struggle to maintain their audiences, so providing rich data on our growing audiences we are confident will prove OOH’s worth.”

 

The body is calling for expressions of interest from organisations which specialise in software development to build the platform, which will include the integration of industry formats and inventory, selling and buying and post analysis and billing.

“Initially the ATP will bring the industry together under one hub that harmonises all the things we currently do, in terms of selling inventory, including inventory that currently isn’t in MOVE – regional and taxis,” Moldrich told Mumbrella.

“From this position we then looked at building the system further so that would make it easier for buyers.”

She said the new product would allow a “more sophisticated” mapping overlay tool to allow buyers to gauge the best positions for their formats, which will have more geo-data infused locations, giving buyers of outdoor the ability to target specific demographics or markets, such as looking at where all the Mandarin speakers in Australia live.

Selection of OOH

“Given that OOH is a location based media channel, by that I mean OOH is good at broadcasting, as well as narrowcasting, having a sophisticated mapping system gives buyers and sellers a geotargeted means of locating audiences,” she said.

“The ATP will have the ability to draw in reach and frequency numbers from MOVE, interrogate audiences through the mapping system, as well as enabling agencies to fuse consumer, geo and other data sources into the system.

“This builds a very detailed picture on the audiences for the OOH campaign they are buying.”

The OMA launched MOVE with a goal of increasing marketshare within three years to $600m.

“It took us five years to get to $600m but we did get there,” said Moldrich.

“When we started off with MOVE we were at $474m so it was an ambitious target to grow OOH to $600m in three years, we got there at the end of last year.”

Last year the outdoor industry finished with a marketshare of $602m.

“If you’re monitoring our growth figures, we ended last year with 10 per cent growth, we started this year with 21 per cent growth in the first quarter,” she added.

“We have grown 26 per cent in the last five years and continue to be the only traditional media channel that has had steady growth.”

With the launch of the ATP the goal post has been planted at the $1b mark with Moldrich saying “you need to be aspirational”.

When you look at the SMI figures for the first quarter of this year, outdoor in agencies outstripped print sales in agencies. That’s pretty big stuff. In agency land we are the third most bought media channel, there’s TV, online and outdoor.”

Phase one of the ATP will not host programmatic trading capabilities, with the OMA expecting to roll out programmatic trading in the future.

“While we may one day trade programatically using this platform, our intention is not to start there, we will build that capability into the system but it certainly won’t be part of stage one,” said Moldrich.

The expressions of interest close on Monday August 3 at 3pm, with those interested in tendering able to bid for the entire transaction platform or one or more of the four envisaged components.

Miranda Ward

In February Mumbrella held a hangout with Charmaine Moldrich. View it below.

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