QMS chief executive John O’Neill predicts the company will experience double-digit growth in 2024 as the out-of-home industry continues to experience strong growth in ad revenues despite the tough economic headwinds.
As 2023 closes out on another good year for outdoor advertising revenues, O’Neill told Mediaweek, the long-awaited arrival of the audience measurement system MOVE 2.0 (Measurement of Outdoor Visibility and Exposure) will help the industry deliver similar growth in 2024.
The system will deliver an update on the current MOVE 1.5, which was launched by The OMA in 2022, to provide “much more detail” for advertisers as well as extend the measurement system into extend into regional areas.
“What [MOVE 2.0] is going to do is provide much more granular data for advertisers and agencies to be able to plan their media campaigns. At this stage, the transition from MOVE – which was basically a static measurement system – into MOVE 1.5 has been received really well,” said O’Neill.
“There will be a transition period, but once we get to the stage where critical mass exists in the market, and you’ve got MOVE 2.0 with all of the data sets, I think you’ll find the industry will grow significantly, and very quickly.”
QMS City of Sydney – Uber
O’Neill listed Nine, Paramount, Seven, SCA, most of the radio stations, and all the streaming services as media brands making the most of the digital network. When it comes to attracting ad dollars – from within the media industry and out of it – he said that the key has been the measurement system of MOVE 1.5.
“The measurement system plays a huge part, because we’ve got a much greater understanding of where audiences are. Having a digital platform plays into the hands of that well, because, at the end of the day, we can serve ads when we need to with appropriate creative at different times, and be very targeted and immediate with it.
“The dominance and the recall that we’re getting have been fantastic. We get a chance to get greater stats around long-term memory encoding, and that influences sales and brand awareness.”
To this end, O’Neill predicts a good year for the QMS business as it focuses on “strengthening relationships with clients and advertisers.”
“We’re very focused on development in New South Wales, we’ve got three pretty exciting tenders to announce over the next few weeks. There’ll be 30 plus large format digital locations for us – 60 to 70% of those will be New South Wales, all A-Grade, quality locations, which will enable us to fight for a bit more of that New South Wales money. That will have a flow-on effect with our network balance around the country.
“From our perspective, we’re forecasting double-digit growth on the basis that we’ll have a new suite of assets, new stories to tell, more digital, and we’ve just introduced Performance Plus – it’s almost like a post-analysis scenario, which has never really been done in out of home before. There’s a third party verification piece that exists, we guarantee our audience and the numbers, and we make up for the audience numbers afterwards,” he said.
QMS City of Sydney – Paspaley
With October marking one year of the QMS City of Sydney street furniture network, O’Neill said the asset has “always been the envy of all of the suppliers in market.”
“To win the tender and have the opportunity to represent that really heavily sought-after audience within the 26k radius of the CBD of Sydney is something that we didn’t take on lightly.
“We had the opportunity to digitise it, set new tones, new benchmarks, and new communication pieces, that’s been the thing that’s revitalised the industry. If you have a look at the street furniture category that it exists in, it’s only now trading at 2019 levels – but the revenue that we’re writing in City of Sydney has far exceeded where we thought we’d be,” said O’Neill.
See Also: “Exhilarating, challenging, highly rewarding”: One year of QMS’ City of Sydney network
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Top Image: John O’Neill