Big screens in outdoor locations are exciting – think Times Square or Piccadilly Circus. Even static displays can add pizazz to an outdoor environment if mixed with creative art projects or public service information. However, a missing ingredient means even the most modern, most digital display still lives in the Old World … and will be disrupted. Can local authorities derive revenue from outdoor display advertising? Well, yes. The City of Sydney plans to implement a program, which should see annual revenue of some $35m over 10 years. The City of New York has implemented a program it says will provide that city revenues of $US500m over 12 years. All of this is funded through Out of Home (OOH) advertising. OOH advertising has for years belonged squarely in the “Old” World of guesstimate and big-stick negotiation. Figures have been obtained from sources such as Census data for how many people are in Times Square, Piccadilly or downtown Sydney and are used to justify a perceived value for advertising. This valuation model is similar to the one for pre-internet newspapers. Back then, circulation figures underpinned advertising costs and no other measures of effectiveness were applied. The newspaper’s ad department might supply some demographics (and might not); but there was little in the way of a sophisticated, digitised gauging of effectiveness. Then along came the Internet and everything changed. So, what if the effectiveness of OOH display advertising could be measured? What if we were able to understand metrics like how many people looked at a screen or display, or even how many people interacted with it? That would be a breakthrough. An innovative Australian software company is building this capability. It has developed software that can measure the effectiveness of advertising on outdoor displays. In the ‘New World’, powered by smartphones, Wi-Fi and IoT, unique content can be targeted, and its effectiveness measured. OOH is not new, just like newspaper advertising wasn’t new. However, the industry is about to go through a period of disruption based on the ‘New World’. This disruption will create opportunities for councils to lock in long term, high revenue OOH programs that will provide strong revenue flows but will also allow for free Wi-Fi along with the provision of public service and safety information. Councils making innovations through disruption? Yes. But councils using advertising revenue to fund this disruption? That’s gold. Miles Stanton is a 30-year veteran of the IT industry and has worked in several industries as they faced the challenges (and reaped the opportunities) of digital disruption. Stanton joined XTD and its software development arm, Contact Light, in early 2018. At XTD he is working to assist owners of outdoor real estate like Councils to secure long-term revenue streams through OOH advertising by taking advantage of digital disruption opportunities.

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