What Will Digital Out-of-Home Look Like in 10 Years? Experts Tell Us

A golden age is dawning for storytelling via digital signage and its encompassing multimedia ecosystem.
What Will Digital Out-of-Home Look Like in 10 Years? Experts Tell Us
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A golden age is dawning for storytelling via digital signage and its encompassing multimedia ecosystem.

As the world became more reliant on social media ads during the Covid-19 pandemic, digital out-of-home (OOH) advertising experienced a rebirth unforeseen by many. However, immersive technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality have transcended existing understandings of OOH in a triumphant post-pandemic revival. And if the predictions of several experts are an indicator, the future looks amazing. In an article for The Drum, here's what they had to say:

Katy Hindley, group innovation director, Posterscope

Out-of-home is designed, by default, to be part of everyone’s everyday lives; to exist in locations where people are. It’s the only medium that has its own infrastructure. With the rollout of 5G connectivity and smart cities, we’re going to see advertising that communicates with audiences in a more intuitive way, is more intuitive to the environment and feeds data back into a much bigger system to be self-improving. This will take us far beyond the advertising screen. Look at smart lampposts and other things that have infrastructure built into them creating new wifi spots. It’s all so exciting.

Nicole Lonsdale, chief client officer, Kinetic

I don’t think we should start preparing for a Minority Report future. That’s not the nature of the channel. In five or 10 years’ time, the fundamentals of marketing will remain important. What will be grabbing headlines even more is OOH’s reach. But that will be refined.

We talk about ‘mass personalization’ in OOH: using data (which will only become richer) to add more contextual layers and more value in terms of what it gives back to consumers. But the channel is not going to change so fundamentally. It’s not going to be one person walking down the street being served a piece of copy just to them. It doesn’t work in that way. OOH is about herd behavior; it reaches groups of people. We can’t lose sight of that; that’s its strength and it’s something that no other channel can offer.

Pavel Popov, chief executive officer, Hypnogram (part of Invnt Group)

I can’t wait to see integrations with AR technology: glasses, lenses and other concepts that re-imagine how the world could look. If we all have these glasses, how beautiful could outdoor advertisements look? Sometimes it’ll be just for fun; sometimes it could be useful, directing us to where we’re going within an ad, for example. This technology will be adopted on a mass level, and it will provide a great new tool for us to create beautiful and meaningful experiences.

To read more predictions for digital out-of-home, check out The Drum's Out-of-Home Deep Dive.

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