OOH signs supercharged their role as public noticeboards across Australia: OMA annual report

The Outdoor Media Association (OMA) of Australia in its 2020 Annual Report cites that during the pandemic, “Out of Home (OOH) signs supercharged their role as public noticeboards, broadcasting community health, safety and wellbeing messages – keeping spirits and cities alive”. The industry was “tenacious, creative and resilient in dealing with the impact of restrictions and public health orders which adversely affected business operations and revenue”.

In that period, the association completed the 10^th annual data update for MOVE (Measurement of Outdoor Visibility and Exposure), Australia OOH industry’s audience measurement system. The OMA Annual Report states that “in 2020, the OMA finalised a tender process and appointed global media measurement experts Ipsos to evolve MOVE for the digital age. Ipsos will upgrade MOVE to a national model and enhance the system's capability to measure Digital Out of Home (DOOH). The new system will be launched in 2023”.

Caring for the community is core to OMA’s multi-stakeholder engagement. In this regard, the Australian OOH industry had “donated $92M in free advertising space to more than 140 not-for-profit organisations including arts, sports and charities across the country, an increase of  six per cent from $87M in 2019,” the report states.

The industry took these initiatives even as the pandemic caused the net media revenue to decline by 39.4% to $566.5mn in 2020, from $935.5mn in 2019. However, “the dominance of digital signs continued, with 56.1 per cent of revenue now attributed to digital”, the report states.

Charles Parry-Okeden, Chairman OMA and MOVE, in his Message to the industry writes, “I am proud of how the Out of Home (OOH) industry stepped up to the challenge by supporting the public health response. It was reassuring to see our members’ networks of digital signs used by advertisers and government to broadcast information to what was now our new hyper-local world. With information changing rapidly, our digital signs were able to respond quickly with important tailored messages reaching the right audiences at the right time.

Charmaine Moldrich,  CEO, OMA and MOVE, states in her Message that “watershed moments like this can help propel us to be innovative, to change and to grow”.