Out of home media has been a constant presence in the lives of people living in urban environments for the last 150 years or so.
Research clearly shows its presence is appreciated and understood, with many consumers feeling it enhances the city or town environments they live and work in.
The medium’s strength and central proposition to brands has always flowed from this constancy of visibility, its broadcast reach.
Over the last thirty years it’s arguable that poster advertising has been in a state of constant change.
From a national patchwork quilt of media owners, the sector has been streamlined in terms of ownership and has become highly refined in terms of quality and delivery.
New formats have been launched, poster installations have gone hand-in hand with investments in public utilities, new locations such as shopping malls, and transport environments, airports and metro systems have been consistently up-graded or occupied.
Long-standing issues such as measurement have been tackled with the creation of a new version of Postar, which for the first time puts out of home audience measurement on a par with - and even ahead of - other advertising media.
On the threshold of change
In many ways however, out-of home advertising is a medium at a crossroads.
The tide of digital technology has in the last five years caught up with the industry in the UK and in markets around the world.
Digital poster screens are being deployed in increasing numbers and as our report On the Threshold of Change: The Future of Out of Home Media in the UK reveals, this investment will increase the sector’s market share, and digital will account for around a quarter of outdoor revenues by 2020.
However, Kinetic forecasts an even more significant shift in the relationship between media and consumers outside the home.
The results of our analysis and consultation across the industry suggests that over the next 10 years technology will in effect create a new medium in urban environments and a far closer relationship between posters and consumers.
How will this happen? The answer lies in the opportunity to build interactive mobile technology into the mobile proposition.
Recent studies suggest smartphone penetration will reach around 75% by 2015.
Our own research points to 45% penetration now and building fast.
Couple this trend with the addition of near field communications (NFC) capability into smartphones such as Google’s latest Android device and the opportunity becomes clearer.
NFC is now widely expected to cause a behavioural shift in terms of the way consumers buy things and download content to mobile devices while out and about.
In 10 years the action of tapping your device to transact could become second nature.
Critically, this technology side-steps the issue of persuading a person to spend time interacting with a poster.
It creates what Kinetic believes is the next big challenge for poster advertising: to build a consistent opportunity for advertisers to use seamless transactional, high-volume poster-to-mobile advertising.
A vision of the future
Here’s the potential scenario. A national network of shopping mall digital posters sites is equipped with NFC functionality.
A group of shoppers might stroll through a mall equipped with these and spot a price promotion on a digital 6 sheet for a retailer 25 yards farther on.
They casually tap the site as they walk by on their way to say Boots or Next.
Perhaps that 6 sheet is also "smart" and spotted the group were women and changed the display accordingly; integrate this with real-time planning techniques linked to retailer stock management or the weather and you have an advertising platform in urban spaces that can deliver highly targeted, highly flexible campaigns.
Kinetic’s research has found that half of consumers say they can already imagine interacting with posters and would be happy to do so if the right incentive is offered.
We believe all the evidence points to the creation of a very different form of poster advertising over the next decade or so.
A new targeted medium that complements out of home media’s broadcast reach will enable advertisers to do completely new things and engage with consumers in ways that are directly relevant to their lifestyles and the environments they’re in.
It’s a big challenge, but an enormous opportunity that could transform the dynamics of the media industry.