‘Time to accelerate automation’: three key takeways from this year’s WOO Global Congress

Some of the world’s most influential out-of-home leaders discussed how collaboration, audience measurement, and automation is the way forward for the medium, reports Ella Sagar from Lisbon.

Last week the World Out of Home Organisation (WOO) convened its global congress in Lisbon to discuss topics from sustainability and digitisation to how to grow the medium’s share of local and global adspend.

Multiple speakers highlighted standardisation of language and metrics to match online channels, more communication and collaboration between industry players, improved audience measurement, and the implementation of automation  into the planning, buying and production process as ways of enhancing out of home’s (OOH) proposition to advertisers and agencies.

This is within the context of some markets, like France and Germany going through ad bans, as well as more wider scrutiny on advertising budgets within an uncertain macroeconomic environment.

Nick Parker, who announced he was now global managing partner of GroupM Outdoor (previously global COO of WPP specialist agency Kinetic), said the outdoor market in 2023 was “tough” as it faced unexpected headwinds with inflation and the Ukraine war off the back of two years of the Covid pandemic.

He added: “We’ve got so many green shoots in our medium, and so much that we can build on going forward, but I think it’s a tough year. I think we’re going to get through it and I think we will build on that going forwards.”

One of the most memorable moments from the event was seeing a Ukranian OOH leader receive a standing ovation from the 500 delegates in the room. Victor Ivanchenko from outdoor advertising media owner Prime Outdoor Ukraine, delivered a presentation about the realities of outdoor advertising in a warzone.  Ivanchenko’s presentation focussed on the resilience of Ukrainian people in dealing with issues including destroyed inventory, a population on the edge of poverty, and lack of investment. 

Use language digital marketers will understand

In order to grow OOH’s place on media plans, many panellists, including outgoing global WOO president Tom Goddard called for more consistent language with online advertising to refer to OOH planning and buying.

Christian Schmalzl, co-CEO of German digital outdoor media owner, Stroer, told delegates: “We try to use online language as well to present; so we talk about reach, but we also talk about new users per month. That’s what the true media companies do.”

Schmalz also stressed tracking was an important part of this, but said there were many digital out of home (DOOH) targeting options that did not “have to be complicated” and needed simplifying and demystifying, including contextual or time-based targeting which makes us the majority of their advertisers’ targeting demands.

He explained that using existing tech and language from digital made it easier for advertisers to see DOOH as “a natural part of the digital game”, which means you would be holding “a small spoon in a huge waterfall of advertising dollars” if you focus on digital.

Adopting digital language tied in with standardisation and verification for Parker who said on the subject: “Digital-first marketers want to have standards of how we transact, how we measure, how we verify, how we do everything. We are not there yet but if we agree standards, as an industry and do that, we will get there and we will take the opportunity, but it is not going to be as easy.”

On digitisation, he said now was the time to accelerate automation in OOH.

When asked where OOH will be in five years, Parker told delegates: “If we have not automated 40% to 50% of what we do, I think it’s disappointing.”

He said programmatic at the moment was still really “very small” from an investment perspective and that if it was not making up 25% of spend in five years’ time it would also be “disappointing.”

OOH needs a ‘consistent story’

More collaboration, not just on the buy-side or sell-side, was critical to OOH’s future growth.

Parker said: “With Talon, with Dentsu, we’re not competing with each other, we’re competing with that 58% online share, and we are still that 5% medium. We’ve all got to get together and find the best way of working as individual markets in our medium, whilst keeping our unique businesses that we offer our clients because that’s always been the interest we have had.”

He said more cross-market collaboration was needed to work out what was needed as a medium and to make “the story consistent across all sides of the market”.

On this point of collaboration, Parker said OOH specialists were still needed, but should not be “siloed” if agencies want omnichannel campaigns with integrated strategies.

Schmalzl said that OOH needed investment over time to reach “a critical mass” for advertisers to have an opportunity to “move the TV money into digital out of home”.

He also suggested there were “new opportunities to step up” to gain investment and replicate advertising formats, like magazines, that have had audience decline for years.

Sustainability: ‘the biggest opportunity of our lifetimes’

One of the main issues raised at the conference was how to make OOH a more sustainable choice for advertisers, and how the medium could become more sustainable.

Katrin Robertson, CEO of BlowUp Media and leader of WOO’s Sustainability Taskforce, spoke on the global congress’s first ever sustainability panel about her company’s “sustainability journey” which started in 2019.

Previously BlowUp Media produced 100,000 square metres of plastic every year, the largest contributor to its carbon footprint, but now produces all of its billboards with 100% recycled material which is coated in a material that takes away pollution from the surrounding area, amongst other initiatives like using ocean plastics.

The WOO Sustainability Taskforce, which met for the first time immediately before the conference, announced it aims to share best practice and process on a website for and from the OOH market, and to come up with a communication strategy.

“There’s so much misinformation out there about how bad out of home is which is absolutely wrong,” Robertson stressed. “There has already been a lot of research, but we have to really think about a good communication strategy to support you in your local regional market to get the right information and arguments out there.”

Martin Corke, CMO of Clear Channel UK, revealed that since 2008 the media owner had reduced its carbon footprint by 83%, partially by replacing traditional strip lighting on 20,000 sites of poster and paper panels to bespoke LED light strips, as well as replacing its 220-strong van fleet in the UK to electric and hybrid vehicles. The company also elected to turn off its digital screens where possible between midnight and 5am to reduce energy output, carbon and save money. OOH, he added, scored consistently “top” on agency campaign carbon calculators.

The panel also discussed how to visualise sustainability. Stephanie Helen Scheller, head of sustainable solutions at Omnicom Media Group, revealing a metric ton of carbon would be a cube of eight metres by eight metres, which would take a tree 18 years to turn back into oxygen. The average campaign currently produces 5.4 tonnes of carbon.

She explained how OOH’s sustainable image could be communicated: “You have a one-to many-medium so OOH is actually a very high eco-efficient medium. We should be able to tell that to clients and your clients to make more sustainable media planning.”