April, as the start of the second quarter, brought us new insights into 2025. As such we’ll take a look at Out-of-Home industry stats for Q1 of 2025. Furthermore, with the growth of programmatic OOH, some patterns are beginning to emerge which closely resemble the programmatic side of digital advertising as a whole. Lastly, we’ll talk about ways to improve your digital signage and how to make a broader impact through your content.
Challenges emerge for programmatic OOH
A recent post on the Billboard Insider website drew parallels between the world of online advertising and programmatic OOH advertising on digital signage. The programmatic trait initially brought efficiency and new revenue to the online world. However, with growth, challenges emerged, as it usually goes. Oversupply, falling ad rates, and brand safety concerns, among other things, started drawing attention.
These patterns are now arising in programmatic advertising on digital signage as well. Of course, digital signage as an environment brings its own unique challenges to this mix. One of them is the ever familiar aspect of inconsistent impression measurement. Overall, there is a lack of uniformity and consistency between brands, including their pricing, creating confusion. Overall, the programmatic side of OOH will truly be beneficial in the long run, but only if the industry addresses emerging issues to avoid repeating mistakes we saw in the realm of digital advertising.
Measuring billboard cost efficiency
The key to efficient signage of any kind is ensuring it achieves its maximum potential. Digital signage in particular is well worth the investment, but it’s important to keep an eye on key metrics to recognize areas requiring improvement.
A recent post on BlipBillboards outlined such key metrics, alongside a formula for each of them. These included total impressions, as well as return on ad spend, among a few others. Each of them are explained in detail, making this post quite useful if you’re just starting out. It’s important to recognize which of these metrics hold great value over others for you. For example, your content may be aimed at raising awareness versus provoking a particular viewer action.
For additional info, more specifically aimed at analytics in digital signage, check out our post on the matter as well!
Evolving methods of reaching audiences
Capturing consumer attention is continuously becoming a challenge for brands. Being in the Out-of-Home business, we’ve taken notice of the growth of the industry, as more and more businesses turn to the medium to achieve this goal. While OOH achieves satisfactory results in its standard use, brands are exploring ways to use it for creating a buzz on a larger scale to disrupt the standard advertising game and to attract even more attention.
A recent post over at Wrapify talked about how businesses can use outdoor advertising to achieve this disruptive effect. For a start, it involves versatility and utilizing every tool available. After all, to create a disruption, you cannot do what everyone else is doing. Making use of tools such as gamification, social media, and other mediums, in combination with your OOH content, the potential increases. The challenge is to make choices unique and fitting to your brand that create a positive effect. There is such a thing as negative disruption, after all. If you’re interested in pondering on the possibilities of making a splash with your outdoor campaigns, take a look at the full post!
Australian OOH reports positive numbers for Q1 2025
Typically, we like to make brief mentions of different stats from around the globe, particularly in the US, to get a clearer outlook on the status of the Out-of-Home realm, especially when it comes to planning for the future! With that in mind, this month we learned that Australia’s OOH industry had a 16.13% rise in net media revenue for Q1 2025. The CEO of OMA (Outdoor Media Association), Elizabeth McIntyre, praised the impact of OOH as a medium which raises visibility and impact of brands. She also noted that the industry is in a strong position for sustained growth in 2025 and beyond.
In other news, OMA (Outdoor Media Association) recently held the first ever OMA Creative Awards, celebrating Australia’s creative Out-of-Home excellence.Â
Upgrading the storefront with digital signage
This month on the OnSign TV blog, we outlined additional guidelines for improving your business impact through digital signage. For a start, the storefront is easily the most important location for digital displays in businesses that thrive on foot traffic. We talked about maintaining your style, polishing your format, as well as sharpening your quick-messaging skills.
Another important note, closely related to improving the impact on your audience, is the ability to tell stories through your digital signage. Whether they be simple messages or complex brand stories, packaging them in the right way is key to ensuring they’re understood!
Cover image by Eilis Garvey.
