PML Group’s annual Out of Home (OOH) market review for 2015 indicates that the OOH sector grew by 6% in 2015, following on from a similar level of growth in 2014. The Outdoor advertising specialist attributes this consistent upward pattern to the ‘always on’ nature of the medium, improvements in the quality of the advertising plant, the flexibility of the formats, the innovation and creativity on offer in the market and external economic factors.
The report highlights some key facts and figures for the past twelve months, including the top advertisers on the medium. Top of the list for the year was Diageo, with a total market share of voice of 4.6%, substantially ahead of McDonald’s in second place on 3.2%. The top three was completed by eir, including campaigns for the rebranding from eircom and for their mobile brand, Meteor. These three advertisers all increased their total display values by 20-30% in 2015, when compared to 2014.
Telecoms companies such as eir, Three and Sky accounted for more than 10% of all OOH activity in 2015 and was the top spending category of advertiser for the year. The finance sector was in second place, driven mainly by financial institutions such as AIB, Bank of Ireland and permanent tsb, and insurance companies. Retail Outlets completed the top three categories with the majority of spend in this sector coming from supermarkets including Lidl, Tesco and SuperValu.
A key trend highlighted in the report is the ever increasing importance of digital advertising in an OOH context. Digital OOH gives advertisers the opportunity to broadcast entertaining, rich content that extends audience engagement and allows advertisers to keep apace of audience expectations in today’s digital world. The inherent flexibility that digital OOH offers opens digital networks to a wide array of advertisers allowing them to broadcast dynamic content, time sensitive copy, reactive messaging and interactive campaigns. Digital OOH advertising accounted for 11% of total OOH advertising in 2015 and at the beginning of 2016 2,200 digital OOH screens are available for commercial advertising in the Republic of Ireland.
Commenting on the report, Colum Harmon, marketing director at PML Group said “2015 was a very encouraging year for Out of Home. For the first time in many years we are seeing consistent and consecutive growth across quarters. Demand is high in the market and advertisers have reacted very positively to improvements in the medium, particularly in digital and large format. Early indications are again good for 2016 and with a general election, Euro 2016 and the Olympics on the horizon in 2016, coupled with a general increase in demand, we expect the market to grow by a similar level this year again.”
