Industry Standards

In January 2022 the Out of Home (OOH) industry released its first ever Industry Standards. Created in consultation and collaboration with the Media Federation of Australia (MFA) and the Outdoor Futures Council (OFC), the Standards will make it easier for advertisers and agencies to plan, buy, and measure the effectiveness of campaigns.

Easier to plan and buy

Being everywhere in the real-world for everyone to see is one of Out of Home (OOH) advertising’s most compelling virtues. OOH signs are seen by people, as they commute, shop, work, study and play. This ubiquity gives brands the opportunity to broadcast their messages on OOH signs to the right people, at the right time and in the right place. With a variety of formats, environments, and locations on offer — from large and small-scale roadside billboards, to train concourses; from shopping centres, to cafes, gyms, universities and office buildings, OOH signs offer brands a lot of choice. With all this on offer and more innovations in the pipeline like programmatic, it is critical for the industry to make the channel easier to transact.

Making it easier to measure

Advertising investment in OOH has steadily increased over the last seven years, from $500M in 2013 to nearly $1B in 2019. This investment has been driven by growing audiences, advances in audience measurement, and the agencies and advertisers who have embraced the opportunities of Digital Out of Home (DOOH). Providing more transparent and tangible proof to back the investment is the impetus for upgrading to the industry’s audience measurement system MOVE (Measurement of Outdoor Visibility and Exposure).

MOVE 1.5 as an interim measure for DOOH that will deliver reach and frequency for digital signs, as well as measure impact. MOVE 2.0, due to be launched in 2024, will evolve MOVE to be a national system, covering all formats, with the capability to measure audiences for both digital and classic signs. Having a consistent standard nomenclature that describes, formats, geography, sales, and verification in tandem with an enhanced audience metric will transform how we do business and will help propel the next stage of growth.

A future-proofed industry

Standards lay the groundwork for the industry to adopt new tools and technologies. We see more advertisers using the benefits of DOOH, harnessing its capabilities to deliver timely and contextually relevant messages to their customers. This innovation is set to grow with the increasing use of data driving more programmatic campaign sales, targeting audiences, locations and moments that can be bought and sold at the click of a button. This automation needs a streamlined and consistent framework for the industry to trade from. Standardisation is just one of a suite of innovations we are undertaking to future-proof and propel the industry forward.