Expressing concern over the low market share of Out-Of-Home (OOH) advertising which stands at 4% globally, Madison World’s Chairman Sam Balsara on Wednesday said that it can gain its share in the next few years with the advent of technology in outdoor advertising.

During his opening address on ‘OOH Fast Forward’ at the 4th edition of e4m Neons OOH Conference, Balsara, who is an advertising and marketing veteran, said, “Outdoor, as an industry, has been growing but the fact that its share has come down globally means the other media are growing much faster. We must take measures so that the outdoor industry grows faster than it is growing now and gain its market share.”

He said that he is confident about the prospects in OOH advertising in the coming years because of the advent of technology.

“I am bullish about the prospects in OOH in the coming years. One reason is that technology has entered OOH. Once you have the benefit of technology, scaling up becomes faster and advertisers love the input of technology. The arrival and rapid adoption of digital OOH around the world is another reason. It will happen in India too, sooner or later,” he noted.

Balsara, who has 50 years of experience in advertising and marketing, said there is a need to look at countries which are doing well when it comes to OOH advertising.

“We need to develop category-wise knowledge and expertise. We need to develop case studies on when OOH works, how it works, why it works, what works and where it does not work. We need to understand why some countries do better. Why is Japan doing better? And try and incorporate some of those learnings here. We need to talk about all this,” he said.

Sharing the statistics, Balsara said that Japan has 12% of OOH market share globally followed by France, China, Russia, and Germany. The average market share of OOH of countries like UK, Brazil, USA, and Italy is lower. We must learn from countries which are doing well in OOH and see how they are doing it.

“Digital never fails to surprise. Globally, digital has gone up in share from 33% to 56% today. Digital has penetrated every medium. It contributes 27% globally in outdoor advertising,” he said, observing that digital alone is larger than all other mediums put together.

He suggested that for OOH to grow faster, there is a need to develop testimonials from prominent marketing people who have used outdoor; get media planners and agencies who are media agnostic; and build the confidence of advertisers in OOH.

Listing out the reasons for the slow growth rate of outdoor advertising, Balsara said it is the lack of advertiser’s confidence in OOH.

“This lack of confidence could be firstly, due to a lack of credible third-party monitoring. Secondly, third-party credibly industry-supported and recognized viewership data is still eluding us. Thirdly, there is a lack of clear guidelines from local regulatory bodies on the legalities of the sites in question, and lastly inadequate selling efforts by sales teams to both educate and sell to media planning agencies and advertisers resulting in inadequate awareness of the opportunities that exist in outdoor unlike the efforts put in by print and tv,” he said.

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