‘Need a clear road map for sustainability,’ says Tom Goddard, President of WOO

Giving a global perspective to the future of OOH on Day 1 of the 18^th edition of Out Of Home Advertising Convention (OAC), Tom Goddard, President of World Out of Home Organization (WOO), spoke on the theme, ‘A new future for OOH: Driving cross-border Investments & Sustainability’. In his presentation, Tom drove home the criticality of certain key factors for Indian OOH to get on the global growth track.

He began by setting the larger economic context, highlighting the growing importance of markets like APAC and India in particular, given the population and demographics. APAC, he said, now accounts for a third of the world’s GDP – nearly 40% bigger than Europe and the Unites States respectively.

Tom also drew attention to the fact that India had already dethroned UK as the 5^th largest economy in the world. He also highlighted the rapid infrastructure developments happening in the country and the large investments happening towards expansion of transport networks in the country.

Against this background, he shared some numbers regarding the global OOH scenario, based on a survey by WOO. He pointed out that global revenues had increased by nearly 16% to $41.9bl, with the share of ADEX rising from 4.7% to 5.2%, a growth of 10%.

Cutting back to the Indian OOH scenario, he pointed to some obvious gaps in Indian OOH growth, especially when pitted against the country’s positive economic indicators. Tom once again drew attention to numbers from the WOO survey, which showed the difference between Indian OOH and other APAC giants such as China and Japan, when it came to parameters such as revenues, share of adex and digital penetration.

Tom then took a deep dive into the reasons that were stalling the growth of Indian OOH growth – the top one, in his assessment, being lack of measurement and data, followed by lack of adtech development across the industry, absence of a strong industry relationship with regulatory bodies, fragmented media ownership, inadequate collaborations and the lack of what he called a clear sustainability roadmap.  Tom in fact reiterated the need for a clear sustainability plan, given the implications it could have on the future. Also, as he pointed out, advertisers or brands, are increasingly being emphatic about sustainability as a mandatory business practice. It is therefore only fitting for the OOH industry to follow suit.

Backed by data and insights, Tom certainly gave the audience a lot to think about and left no room for doubt in terms of what the Indian OOH space needs to do on a priority basis in order to accelerate the growth pedal.

The 18^th edition of Out Of Home Advertising Convention (OAC) was inaugurated at the Hilton Garden Inn, Embassy Manyata Business Park, Bengaluru yesterday, with a power packed line-up of sessions over two days.