Most people reading this SMARTreport probably travel a great deal for business. We do. In fact writing this editorial, I am sitting in the departure lounge at Los Angeles International airport on my way back to France. In addition to the now classic horizontal LCD screens indicating flight information, a very large (around 60 inch) JCDecaux digital display is strategically positioned around 20 feet away from me, just at the right angle to attract my attention as I work on the laptop. Another one is a little further down, attracting the gazes of a seated “captive audience” in the waiting lounge. There is no TV… just advertising messages… very well done mind you, with clever ads timed to be short enough to get the message across in the time one tends to gaze at the screen.

At the hotel yesterday, as I arrived, I was able to use a 42 inch vertical LCD touch screen to get information about the hotel, what events were on in town, and so on.

One might say out of home digital media has come of age. But I don’t think so. I think we have come to a maturing point of OOH DM 1.0 and are entering the era of OOH DM 2.0 which is set to be much more exciting still! The reason I say this is that major players are only really starting to hop on the bandwagon today, while the tradition “big boys” are consolidating and finding new ways to add value.

I believe there will be three major trends that will emerge this year. Firstly I believe there will be a major onset of interactivity (see more in market section); secondly, I think this will be the year that the numerous business models based around ad-supported networks get well and truly “off the ground”; and thirdly, partly associated with the latter, and partly responsible for it as well, ad-planners will finally have solid metrics to go by, which will very much sort the wheat from the chaff when it comes to the true performance of networks. In other words, there will now be a requirement for a network to perform… to really deliver value for money in terms of faces in front of screens (CPT and GRP) that didn’t exist in the past… because it can be measured.

These and many other exciting developments are outlined in this SMARTreport. We sincerely hope its contents will be of use in planning your next project!