Challenges for the future of Posterscope and the OOH medium

1. What keeps me awake at night ?
I’m lucky enough to sit on the British Screen Advisory Council and they recently
asked the me question ‘what keeps you awake at night ?’ with respect to Posterscope
and the out-of-home communications business. Here’s what I said:
What keeps me awake isn’t to do with restrictions or threats it’s about how we as a
business and as an industry, capitalise on the opportunities that are arising from
technological developments and changes in people’s behaviour when they are out of
their homes with these two points being increasingly interlinked.
What will products such as the i-pad mean for OOH media owner and agencies?
With more people connected (to other people, information and brands) in more places,
what we need is better understanding of how posters, screens, interactive installations,
experiential marketing and the like, influence app and web usage on such devices and
how they in turn influence other behaviour OOH.
The medium’s ability to drive mobile search is something that we have started
exploring and the explosion of smartphones makes this incredibly important for the
future of our industry.

2. A huge amount of social networking is taking place via mobiles, In fact, according to
Comscore those who access social networks via mobiles do so for much longer than
their PC based counterparts.
Our research projects and campaigns are starting to teach us about the power of OOH
media in triggering immediate discussion or advocacy through the mobile web but
there is much more to learn. Facebook makes self expression really easy but
connecting this to screens in places like bars or city centres adds location based
relevance, coupled with crowdsourced data or localised real world fame.
Facebook are about to launch a location based service allowing people to ‘check in’
via a mobile app when they arrive at certain locations, much like Foursquare and this
certainly presents an opportunity for OOH media. For example, a study by Loca
Moda demonstrated that displaying foursquare data feeds on OOH screens doubled
the numbers of people ‘checking in’ to those locations. But at the same time apps
have the potential to increase the proliferation of location based ads so does that
diminish or enhance the uniqueness of posters. How does the OOH industry ensure
that this is an opportunity and not a threat ?
This sort of thing is happening everywhere. In 2008 Google applied for a patent to
overlay virtual posters onto billboards in it’s Streetview photographs and the principle
of online style adserving to digital OOH screens has been talked about for years.
OK, so other people are encroaching on an area historically ‘owned’ by companies
like us. But at the same time we’ve been doing the same with initiatives involving
mobile apps, social media elements or the placement of billboards in computer games.
I’d argue that accepting overlap, striving for collaboration and the creation of new
business models is the way to go.
What we are seeing with all of this is convergence and aside from the technologies
themselves there are other factors that act as convergence catalysts with one great
example being the Olympics.
2012 has already driven changes in media infrastructure and will continue to do so.
One of the main reasons that there are digital advertising screens all over the London
Underground is because they will help boost the image of London as a modern city
for Olympic visitors.
During the event there will be an increase in consumer demand for the latest
associated content and with peoples increased expectation of instant gratification
mobile devices and OOH screens can play a very significant role in delivering this.
One concern with a lot of these technological developments is that they can generate
huge amounts of data about people’s behaviour OOH. GPS tracking, loyalty cards,
travel tickets and even trackable supermarket shopping carts are just a few examples.
So what constitutes responsible use of this data? The answers to this question require
some careful consideration and are not always obvious.

3. But whatever we do as a company and as an industry if we try to maximise the extent
to which our communications plans add value to people’s OOH lives we will stand
the greatest chance of success.
Once we’ve cracked all of this, I guess I’ll sleep better !
James Davies
Director of Hyperspace, Posterscope UK
& Chief Strategy Officer, Posterscope USA