Third Annual PQ Media Digital OOH Forecast: Digital Out-of-Home Among the Fastest Growing Media in the World in 2009, Amid Sharp Ad Spend Downturn and Decline
U.S. spending on video ad networks, the largest segment is on track to expand by 1.2% in 2009. Following a 17.2% compound annual growth rate from 2004-2009, PQ Media is forecasting a 5.7% growth rate in 2010. Digital billboards will remain the fastest-growing segment, posting growth of 9.1% for 2009 and a compound annual growth rate 31.4% during the 2004-2009 timeframe. Digital billboards are expected to grow by 13.2% in 2010.
In case critics of digital billboards didn’t notice the first two studies that show digital billboards are “safety neutral,” a third study was released Thursday (Nov. 19). Conducted by Philadelphia-based Tantala Associates in Cleveland, Ohio, the study is the largest study of digital-billboard safety yet conducted.
Tantala analyzed eight years of traffic accident data—more than 60,000 accident reports from the Ohio Department of Transportation—for the same seven digital billboards it examined in the 2007 study. In addition to the two Cleveland studies, a separate study was conducted and released earlier this year for Rochester, Minn. The conclusion for all three studies was the same: Digital billboards are not linked to traffic accidents.
The Foundation for Outdoor Advertising commissioned the studies, in part, to reassure local governments that accepting digital boards in their cities and towns would not pose a safety hazard. Neither age of the driver nor the time of day played a factor.
Digital billboards have been a boon to outdoor companies such as Clear Channel Outdoor and Lamar Advertising because of the companies’ ability to sell multiple ads in the same space (messages change every 8 seconds). Lamar’s 1,135 digital billboards, now about 10 percent of the company’s revenue, are leading the recovery at the company.
According to PQ Media, digital billboards is the fastest-growing of all digital out-of-home segments, forecast to grow 13.2 percent to $568 million in 2010.
Along with the revenue benefits, the outdoor boards are also performing a public service, used regularly for AMBER alerts, weather alerts and other public service announcements.
Social media and conversation marketing transform brands like no other communication methodology previously, because it changes the fundamental nature of the brand/customer relationship.
But, social media and conversation marketing are inefficient vehicles. It’s difficult to achieve economies of scale when you’re developing relationships with customers on an individualized or small group basis.
Thus, social media is not a solo act. It’s best as part of a jazz combo.
Instead of thinking of social media as a freestanding tactic, first consider how you can add social media components to your existing marketing initiatives.
3 Step Social Media Adoption Plan
1. Devise an appropriate, tactically-agnostic social media strategy
2. Audit your current marketing, and add social media ingredients
3. Where necessary, add new social media programs
5 Ways to Achieve Cross-Media Synergy with Social Media
1. Social Media + Search Marketing
Core tenets of inbound marketing. Create content about your brand, and distribute it as widely as possible. Get more bait in the water. Optimize EVERY piece of content for search.
2. Social Media + Email
Good email and good social media are much more similar than different. Add social sharing to your emails. Promote your email program in social media, and vice versa. Use your social initiatives to try out new content approaches, adding the most successful content to your email program.
3. Social Media + Virtual Events
Your audience isn’t the number of people in the room, it’s the number of people in the world. Take your presentation, add it to Slideshare. Promote it on the social Web. Most of my live presentation are to ~40 people. Most of my presentations have been seen thousands of times subsequently.
How can you redefine virtual events by adding social media components? See Radian6 Twebinars that combine Webinars and live Twitter streams. See #blogchat and similar live Twitter chats. See my own Twitter 20 series of live social media interviews on Twitter.
4. Social Media + Live Events
Extend your event before and after it happens, using social media. Think Tweet-ups and other ways that social media can come to life in three dimensions.
5. Social Media + Market Research
Perhaps the most untapped advantage of social media participation. Ask your customers and fans what they think. You can create all-new products via consumer input. You can execute very simple crowd sourcing programs using CrowdCampaign and similar tools.
Social media works best when it’s part of something bigger. Are you ready for some synergy?
If you liked that, there’s plenty more. Please subscribe to my RSS feed. You can also find me on Twitter @jaybaer
