oOh!Media showcased its 2024 offerings at its Outfront presentation, held at The Calyx in Sydney’s Botanical Garden on Tuesday.
The outdoor advertising and media company shared its offerings for the year ahead and made its case to agencies and clients.
Media buyers from holding companies and independent agencies shared their thoughts and opinions with Mediaweek about the oOh!Media’s biggest selling points, the innovations and what that means for their respective spend.
See also: oOh! Outfront 2024: Every announcement
Anastasia Nicholas, Group Investment Director, OMD Sydney
In an ever-changing and evolving out of home landscape, oOh! Media is going into 2024 with a strong proposition for the year ahead including clever business decisions to drive growth.
Their ‘Sydney premium’ offering is positioned to hopefully make a significant impact across the Sydney market. It provides advertisers with a unique and compelling opportunity to target an exclusive premium audience in a council location, with a format not previously accessible to them.
This not only allows oOh! to strengthen their position in this market but opens avenues for growth across their business and drives healthy competition. Uptake could primarily be focussed around prestige brands given the positioning presented and the exclusive, high end audience available throughout the Woollahra council. Whilst the premium offering is focused around this area, it does potentially present an opportunity for advertisers beyond the City of Sydney.
The focus on campaign performance measurement and data, led by their partnership with Unpacked by Flybys and Westpac DataX is an essential step forward for oOh! and the out of home sector. oOh! Outcomes and the insights that we will be able to access from a planning/campaign performance perspective demonstrates their commitment to transparency and accountability, which has been a challenge for out of home.
Cathy O’Connor – chief executive officer and managing director of oOh!Media
Allowing their data offering to include other out of home providers is a savvy approach. This approach will not only highlight their commitment to industry growth, but also the unique value that out of home brings to overall campaigns. Furthermore, it will also proof point oOh!’s own assets and capabilities.
Offering this measurement to all clients buying a minimum share of 50% is another strategic move from them to see growth across the business with the potential to acquire share from competitors. However attaining 50% share will not always be feasible and buyers will need to exercise caution to ensure that it aligns with the best interest of their clients.
With sustainability being a core focus across media owners at present, oOh!’s emphasis on decarbonisation, circularity and nature ensures that they are contributing to a sustainable future and greener practices. Having the Ecobanner rollout (a fully recyclable material) as the default for large format billboards in 2024 is something that will no doubt see other providers follow suit and hopefully propels more sustainable initiatives across the media channel.
Daniel Cutrone, managing partner, Avenue C
Cathy O’Connor welcomed agencies, advertisers and trade partners to The Calyx in Sydney’s Botanical Gardens for the 2024 oOh! Outfronts.
O’Connor reconfirmed oOh!’s purpose of “making public space better and brands unmissable”. oOh! Media have successfully driven this over several years, with some of Australia’s biggest and best assets.
In contrast to many of the other upfronts seen, oOh! Media focussed on four key areas for 2024: “Sydney”, “Outcomes”, “Retail Media” & “Sustainable Growth”.
oOh! Media announced that it will launch a Premium Sydney network, “the keys to Sydney” which will include the Woollahra Council that has previously had been unavailable to OOH advertisers, as well as Sydney Metro locations (incl. Barangaroo, Central, Waterloo, Martin Place & more). This will include 800 digital faces, including 15x super large format portraits in Sydney CBD with 3DA full motion availability.
This is an exciting opportunity for advertisers wanting to reach affluent audiences of Sydney’s Eastern suburbs, with twice the weekly family income of the national average! With 80 digital panels rolling out in early 2024 – this presents an exclusive opportunity for aspiring advertisers.
oOh! Media are doubling down buyer-graphic targeting to introduce an outcome-based solution, they’ve coined as “oOh! Outcomes”. oOh! Media have partnered with “Westpac Data X” and “unpacked with FlyBuys” to attribute sales outcomes from 12m customers p/wk against their network.
oOh! Outcomes will only be available for advertiser who spend 50% (or more) of their OOH spend with the network, however to date has ROI double when buyer-graphics are in use.
With a growing competitive set within the retail media space, oOh! Media demonstrated both an agnostic and leadership position with “reooh”. reooh allows retail brands to adopt the digital screen footprint within their physical stores, and with 90% of transactions still occurring instore, it allows retailers an opportunity build out an instore infrastructure.
oOh! have successfully partnered with NZ and AU retailers to rollout this product, and remain competitive in the path-to-purchase – reinforcing the importance & communication to customers outside and inside of store.
Lastly, oOh! spoke about their efforts within sustainable growth, with emphasis on decarbonization and circularity. Both advertisers and brands are ever more focussed on their impact on society, and oOh! Media demonstrated today that they are the most geared up to deliver a sustainable future.
Overall, it was an impressive update to market, with exclusive offerings to advertisers which can drive tangible business outcomes, partnering with some of the largest tech/data companies in market.
Marianne Lane, head of investment, Kaimera
oOh! have always had a great offering and the addition to Sydney Metro locations and Premium Sydney will only enhance this. Highlighting a gap in premium outdoor advertising options in the Sydney CBD and Eastern Suburbs emphasises the demand for reaching premium audiences on premium assets in premium locations.
The data play is always of interest and we definitely want to delve deeper into those 800 buyergraphics. If advertisers can double ROI by using buyergraphics rather than demographics, it makes for more targeted and effective campaigns
Recognising and addressing market gaps while embracing the potential of data to enhance the effectiveness of advertising campaigns is a smart strategic approach.
The focus on premium assets in premium locations demonstrates a commitment to providing advertisers with a premium platform to connect with their audiences in meaningful ways.
Robbie Dery – chief commercial operating officer
Sam Cousins, Chief Strategy Officer, The Media Store
The future is definitely bright, as Cathy O Connor showed us at today’s ‘Outfront’ in Melbourne. It was a good reminder of oOh!’s positioning and promise to improve public spaces, with many references to doing a category job for the Out of Home industry. ‘When the tide rises all boats float’ was the analogy. Very true of broadcast channel that is still in growth and a business such as oOh! that is innovative when it comes to digitization, data targeting and attribution.
The new premium and exclusive assets in Sydney’s attractive eastern suburbs will be sought after for brands in 2024, when even the affluent middle class will start to realise the true impact of our cost-of-living crisis and luxury and premium brands will be fighting over a smaller set of Australians.
The investment in buyergraphics, attribution and sophisticated programmatic capabilities will start to convince digital marketers with tightly held budgets to venture into a space that will drive brand at the same time as being highly targeted and measurable. Sewing up the retail ecosystem through continued investment in Re-oOh! just makes sense, and I see significant share shifting their way once that ecosystem grows and is proven.
Dave Levett, founder and managing director of Murmur Group
The oOh! Outfronts for 24, were held in the Calyx of the Royal Botanical Gardens – a fitting venue when you consider that the role of a calyx is to form a protective layer around a flower bud, protecting the inside from outside threats. So formed, a protective layer around the key releases from the Outfronts with a beautiful presentation of ideas, protected by a lack of information or detail to convince you of success.
Key points were talked about enthusiastically, and raised anticipation, but they scratched the surface and gave a summarised top-level view without any supporting detail.
The most interesting part of Outfront ‘24 for brands and agencies, is the release of oOh! Outcomes – an extensive reporting platform that oOh! is leading the market on across all OOH providers. It’s an exciting and ambitious endeavour that they should be applauded and supported on as it sets up an integrated reporting template for the future for out of home advertisers across all campaign channels.
oOh! outcomes is able to provide advertisers and agencies with behaviour-based data including sales & brand uplift across 800 buyer segments mapped to oOh!’s 35,000 sites.
However, talking about what you’re going to do, and how you’re going to do it are two very different things, and arguably the ‘how’ you roll it out, and the methodology you use, is crucial to the success of any reporting platform. We were told about current studies and reports showing uplift, but not given any detail as to how the information was collated and worked through.
oOh! unveiled a shiny new car in “oOh! Outcomes” – showcasing a new reporting platform that will help aggregate and review campaign spends to aid attribution. But once the wrapping came off and the outside of the car was revealed, they moved the car back stage without so much as a peek under the hood, let alone inside the car or taking you for a virtual test drive.
In an industry that has a plethora of dashboards, often creating them for fun, failing to provide any views of the new reporting platform, a run through of the platform, or even a top level view of how it would work, is a missed opportunity. Especially considering they already have data and reports from 16 x campaigns to date.
Drakes Supermarkets
If anyone is interested in driving the car, you need to give away a bunch of your own data, and put down a hefty deposit (spending more than 50% of your campaign budget with oOh!) – and hope that the car delivers the goods.
The reporting platform is an exciting development, but the requisite of availability pending campaign budget spend with oOh! may see limited takeup and invite scrutiny of the efficacy of the reporting offered.
The rest of the Outfronts focused on the remaining key pillars for future growth: sustainability, the release of a series of new premium Sydney assets in the high socio-economic Eastern Suburbs region; and the launch of reoOh! – an expansion of their retail offering launching in Drakes supermarkets across SA & QLD, bridging the gap between broadcast > retail centres > and in-store retail OOH.
Vera Manalac, Group Investment Director, iProspect
What really caught my attention was oOh!’s focus on a clear growth strategy which sees them expanding in 2024, not only in the market but also through sustainable practices. They provided confidence and clarity on their plans for expansion in 2024 with their Premium Sydney offering. Premium Sydney will provide advertisers access to a previously untapped market, Woollahra Council.
Due to their affluence, the Eastern suburbs has always been a highly sought after audience but has been hard to access through advertising.
In addition to that, when it comes to premium small format that can be bought as a concentrated pack in Sydney, City of Sydney has had a monopoly on luxury advertising spend. Given both these factors, this announcement will be a welcome addition to the landscape as it will provide some healthy competition.
Another big announcement was oOh! outcomes. It’s becoming increasingly important for any channel to prove their ROI and oOh! have big plans to address this through oOh! Outcomes. oOh! Outcomes encourages advertisers to shift away from demographics and towards buyergraphics. Through their data partnership with Unpacked (Flybuys) advertisers will now be able to measure and attribute the ROI of their outdoor activity, not just across oOh’s network but the entire sector.
Neil Perry and Vanessa O’Hanlon
oOh! have committed to providing access to deeper insights and attribution that will increase the total share of wallet of the entire outdoor category. Any outdoor trader in market knows that in the past oOh! have required 80%+ minimum share requirements to access their data, but they also announced that they would be lowering this to 50%.
This should remove barriers for a lot of clients (usually with smaller outdoor budgets) who couldn’t afford to give oOh! the former share requirement.
Part of addressing and proving their ROI, naturally leans into being able to demonstrate how they can now play throughout the entire funnel. With Reooh, oOh! will now be placing pannels in store. They had already established themselves in New Zealand but are now available in Drake’s Supermarkets throughout SA and QLD.
This is a step in the right direction as it demonstrates how they can access consumers throughout the entire consumer journey and for some categories, their panels could be the very last touch point.
Paige Wheaton, chief investments and partnerships officer, Initiative
It was clear in oOh! Media’s Outfront this morning that digital transformation is at the heart of their future where maintaining momentum and evolving from a traditional player to a digital first business is a clear ambition. oOh!’s purpose of the generally themed “Better” rang true throughout the various announcements from the session and provided a strong springboard to delivering successful, long term commercial outcomes.
As an agency that’s heavily leant into the future of commerce and retail for our clients, the official launch of reooh is a development that we’re incredibly excited about. This offering is compelling because it demonstrates how we can take the power of Outdoor out of a traditional media approach and provides our clients with new commercial opportunities and diversified revenue streams.
The pace of setup, ease of transaction, scale and back-end capability takes away the murky unknowns which have been many a failure of the past when businesses have trialled independently.
What was also really pleasing to learn was the sector wide approach to measurement, accountability and overall ROI driving initiatives that oOh! Media are launching into market via oOh! Outcomes. Beyond MOVE 2.0, there’s a great opportunity for us to evolve our approach to Outdoor beyond just an awareness play and into personalisation that’s driving relevance, from 1 to many to 1 to the “right” many. How this is operationalised via trading with multiple publishers is to be seen, but something we’re excited to investigate further.
Lastly, oOh!’s ongoing commitment to not only growing the footprint and quality of their product, but also genuine evolution and investment into sustainability is something that Initiative aligns so positively towards.
Decarbonisation, circularity and community as three pillars driving this force feels incredibly intentional. They’re leading the industry with the first eco-banner outdoor panel skin which is built via closed loop recycled material. This being the default from 2024 is the kind of real developments we need to see in this space.
As mentioned briefly in the Q&A, the only thing missing was a mention of AI which has been a general theme underpinning most upfronts this year. Understandably as a non content creating business, what AI looks like to oOh! will be different, but nonetheless is something we want to see more of. For example, how can it better drive process, outcomes and efficiencies?
Neil Ackland, chief content, marketing and creative officer