Competition must for OOH business to grow, assert media owners at International OOH Congress, Zavidovo

“It’s time to write our own symphony”. The 11^th International OOH Congress, held in Zavidovo near Moscow on September 16-17 opened with the announcement of this statement that underlined the industry’s concerted efforts to rebuild the OOH business after two years of major challenges. This was further articulated in a session on federal legislation and regional OOH operations addressed by leaders of Russia’s top OOH media owning firms. The leaders were unequivocal in their collective support for preserving the extant competitive business environment for OOH in Russia, and shared their concerns over proposed federal legislative measures to bring about single-operator driven OOH.

The panel of speakers asserted that a monopolistic business environment will undermine the industry’s growth and development, and infringe upon the freedom of enterprise. They also pointed to how the special advertising rights that a single operator will be provided by way of putting up larger formats, and at places where advertising is not currently permitted, will push back the existing OOH operators to the very periphery of business.

The single-operator driven OOH model would not be suitable for transit media either, it was pointed out.

If a single operator were to be given the rights for a long tenure like 30 years, the existing operators will also get priced out of the market. In many ways, the speakers asserted that the majority of the operators are SMEs and they should have the freedom to do their business at the scale at which they are at this stage.