EUROPE NEWS

UK: Clear Channel's William Eccleshare on The Out of Home Renaissance

My feet barely on the ground following my trip from Cannes, still somewhat dreary-eyed, I meet William Eccleshare, chairman and chief executive of Clear Channel International, in its retrofitted townhouse overlooking one of Old London’s most understated literary and historical icons, Golden Square in Soho.

As one might expect from one of the world’s most distinguished outdoor advertising giants, Clear Channel featured prominently at Cannes, showing off Le Grand Screen, mounted to the top of Le Grand Hotel. It was Eccleshare’s 28th trip to La Croisette, and while we reflected blithely on the festival, I’m here today to discuss the Renaissance of “out-of-home” advertising over the last few years.

Finland: JCDecaux wins the 20 year bus and tram shelter advertising contract for Helsinki

JCDecaux SA has announced that following a tender process, it has won the 20 year exclusive contract for advertising across the 1,500 bus and tram shelters in Helsinki (population: 636,000).

As part of this contract, JCDecaux Finland, which is the Out-of-Home market leader in Finland, will install 250 digital screens in Helsinki bus and tram shelters, paving the way to create the first national Digital Out-of-Home (OOH) network in Finland. It will cover up to 32 cities where JCDecaux currently operates advertising street furniture, reaching 60% of the Finnish population.

This digital channel will further enhance other prime DOOH assets operated by JCDecaux Finland, including the Metro with the brand new Lansimetro line, which opens in September 2017.

France: Digital OOH is Reaching the Tipping Point, But No Transformation in Sight at Cannes

The Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity has been receiving a lot of negative press of late, but one area in particular it should be shining is the awards. Not so, it seems, when it comes to the Digital Outdoor category. Dan Dawson, chief creative technology officer, Grand Visual, believes that, since the category was introduced eight years’ ago, it’s been a mess and is showing few signs of improvement with each passing year.

Writing exclusively for ExchangeWire, Dawson explains why. This year, whilst many battled for a drink at the Gutter Bar during the world’s largest gathering of advertising professionals, I opted to review the creative, and conduct my Cannes analysis from the comfort of my own back garden, Pimms in hand. As my major area of interest is Digital Outdoor, I was keen to check out this year’s winners and to see if the creativity festival had evolved since my less than complimentary review for 2016.

This year, I was particularly interested to see if the awards would capture the creative evolution of this fast-growth medium as it continues its transformation from static branding channel, to dynamic, data-led, contextual, scalable, and interactive conduit.

UK: Limited Space Launches Rotating Screen

Limited Space, the shopping centre media owner, will launch the UK’s first in-mall giant rotational digital advertising screen at intu Lakeside this week with a campaign for the release of Despicable Me 3.

The campaign will be the first of its kind, featuring a 30-second animation specially created for the unique screen. The animation will appear as the screen seamlessly transitions between a landscape and portrait orientation, with the film’s lead characters battling for airtime as the screen completes its rotation.

Measuring 7x4m, the screen is the largest available digital screen in UK shopping centres, and is one of three “Showcase Screens”, installed and created by screen specialists ADI, at intu Lakeside that overlook the main atrium of the centre.

All three screens use specialised rotational technology to turn simultaneously whilst being able to keep a centralised perspective, and are fully equipped with high definition dynamic display and audio to provide a unique, creative and impactful digital platform.

UK: 'Waitrose Spring' storms Outdoor Media Awards

"Waitrose Spring", a campaign live-streaming Waitrose farms to digital out-of-home sites in busy commuter locations, has stormed the 2017 Outdoor Media Awards run by Clear Channel and Campaign.

The campaign by Talon, Manning Gottlieb OMD, Grand Visual, JCDecaux and Ocean Outdoor won both the Innovation award and – new for this year – the People’s Favourite award, voted by the public.

The Waitrose work also took the Grand Prize, triumphing over all category winners that were eligible, and scooped £100,000 in media space.

The winners, who were chosen from a record 120 entries this year, also include:

UK: Ocean and Campaign's digital creative contest is back

Campaign and Ocean have launched their eighth annual competition to discover the best creative ideas in DOOH, using innovative and emerging technology and techniques.

The contest, which rewards creativity at concept stage, is now inviting submissions for bold ideas which set new boundaries from brands, the creative community, agencies and charities. Campaigns can be devised for either UK audiences, or much broader, global audiences spanning three continents (Europe, the US and Asia).

There is just one single category of entry this year, although submissions for charities and commercial brands will be judged and awarded separately by a panel of industry experts.

UK: Why we must learn to separate Programmatic and Brand Safety – Mediacom

John-Paul Major, head of programmatic futures at MediaCom, talks about the common misunderstanding of programmatic's role in brand safety.

If you are of a certain age and grew up watching '80s teen movies like me, then you will be familiar with the words of that infamous school dodger Ferris Bueller: “Life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you might miss it.”

Bueller might have been advocating bunking off school, but I think his wise words ring true in this crazy, fastpaced media world we live in. Fast forward 30 years and I think that there is a big danger that we in the media may fail to take full advantage of the biggest step change in advertising since 1955, when SR toothpaste gave us the first commercial TV advert.

I worry we will fail to realise the vast potential of digital advertising just because we are struggling to separate out how we think about two very distinct fundamental issues: programmatic technology and brand safety in digital display.

USA: Gina Lin Stratford on How Geopath’s New Tools Help Sales

Geopath SVP Scott Fiaschetti moderated a panel at Lookout2017 on Geopath’s new data design tools. Insider doesn’t have an ad tech background and sometimes his eyes glaze over when data acronyms get thrown around. His ears perked up, however, when he heard Yesco’s Director of National Sales Gina Lin Stratford give some specific examples of how the new Geopath tools help sales.

How is data changing how you sell and talk to clients?

First, if you guys are not excited spend a day with my team because we are so excited. My sales team has always wanted to provide solution based sales for clients. With the traditional method of DEC traffic count we had nothing…When CPM impressions data came out we were excited because we had basic demographic information. It put us on the same playing field as TV and radio but it didn’t provide data to compete with digital…This to us is heaven…This allows us to put a proactive plan for business development. We can look at data and have a reason to be on the phone with someone.

USA: OUTFRONT Media Completes Billboard Asset Swap

OUTFRONT Media Inc. has announced that it has completed an asset swap with Independent Outdoor Network. The Company acquired digital billboards in the Boston designated market area (DMA) in exchange for static billboards in four non-metro market clusters considered not strategic to its top DMA focus.

The acquired assets include 16 digital billboard displays, including two displays in-development, and two static billboard displays contiguous with the Company’s existing portfolio surrounding the city of Boston. The divested assets include several hundred static displays in predominantly non-metro areas of Wisconsin, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee and South Carolina.

Brazil: JCDecaux and Vivo sign a national contract to roll out Small Cells across JCDecaux's Brazilian street furniture network

JCDecaux and Vivo sign a national contract to roll out Small Cells across JCDecaux's Brazilian street furniture network

JCDecaux SA and Vivo (Telefônica Brasil SA), number one in mobile communications in Brazil with 74 million clients, today announced the signing of a non-exclusive 10-year framework agreement to deploy Small Cells in JCDecaux street furniture in Brazil.

In just four years, JCDecaux has established itself as the number one outdoor advertising company in Brazil, primarily in street furniture. The partnership with Vivo will provide more than 6,900 sites in the heart of the country's biggest cities, including São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, Belo Horizonte and Salvador.

Australia: OMA outdoor report: More brands, more inventory, more spend

More companies are investing in out-of-home (OOH) than ever before leading the growth of the sector, however, larger brands are decreasing their outdoor budget.

The total spent by the top 10 OOH advertisers last year was $106.8 million, down 11.7% from the prior year. The ten biggest spending categories, however, spent 4.2% more ($478.2m).

The numbers come from the Outdoor Media Association (OMA) 2016 annual report. There are more advertisers in the market, which has boosted overall spend. Net revenue increased 15.8% to $789.5m.

This is largely due to an explosion of digital inventory as more static billboards continue to convert to digital, which can accommodate several rotations of ads on each panel.

South Africa: The perfect pairing – social media and digital out of home

Out of home media is prominent, noticeable and difficult to ignore, traditionally audience engagement with OOH was a challenge that required highly innovative creative to overcome. The introduction of digital out of home (DOOH) and explosion of the access to smart phones has changed all of that – opening up a world of opportunity for creative execution and seamless integration with social media campaigns, as well as real-time audience engagement.

Social media’s strong point is engagement and two-way communication, but it is easy to ignore and many digital adverts are simply not seen. Integrating social media campaigns with DOOH boosts visibility and reach. In this way, social media and DOOH are the perfect pairing.

Social media allows the audience to interact with an OOH campaign, with DOOH they can become part of it, their message can be shown on the billboard, as can a photograph or video they share on social media, through innovative technological integration.

South Africa: The close relationship between malls and media owners

When a brand wants to advertise in a mall, it approaches a media owner who takes care of facilitating this process. It is during this time that the owner liaises with another very important player, mall management. Michael Bratt explores this relationship.

All of the owners who were approached for comment were naturally complementary of mall management. After all without them, they would not have a space in which to generate revenue. But for all the owners, it goes far beyond this. They all agree that a mutually beneficial relationship between the two parties is key.

What each side brings to the table

Mall management brings insights in terms of their shoppers behaviour and flow, buying patterns, dwell time and they inform what offerings are available that drive feet to the mall. “Without their insight and support, trading conditions in terms of what we do would be quiet difficult,” says Mall Ads’ John Faia.

India: That digitally powered billboard

With OOH making use of digital technology for engaging consumers rather than letting them be passive recipients of the message, the dynamic medium has come a long way. The Pitch Madison Advertising Report 2017 saw the OOH market grow by 9% in 2016, with estimates for 2017 at 11%.

According to the report, OOH remained a modest contributor at 6% to the overall ad pie. This is still low compared to the growth of its fellow communication channels. Digital was ahead of other mediums at 42.9%, but this was expected. It was followed by radio at 13.2%, cinema at 12.5%, and TV and print at 9.1% and 7.2%, respectively. Not to forget, 2016 was also the year that impacted growth for various industries owing to demonetisation among other factors.

OOH, traditionally, has assumed the role of being a reminder medium, and therefore sits low on the advertiser’s priority chain. But that was the case until OOH was a static medium, with one essential message being presented to the public for a pre-defined (usually long) period of time. Things changed when various ways to execute OOH, including digital inventory, were explored.

FEPE OOH News 6th July 2017