Noel Cook
Anyone who knows the out of home market is likely to be aware that Australia is ahead of the global curve when it comes to outdoor advertising.
It’s not just that our ads perform better, as evidenced by a recent System1 and JCDecaux study, which found that 60% of Australian ads resulted in brand recognition, against 50% globally.
There’s also the fact that Outdoor Media Association figures show that 2024 revenue growth in Australia outperformed even the highly advanced UK market, with the 8.1% increase taking us ever closer to double-digit territory.
And Australian marketers have been quicker than many of their international counterparts to recognise the benefits of DOOH, such that this accounted for more than 75% of outdoor revenue last year.
And while all this sounds good, I believe we’re only just scratching the surface of what’s possible as there’s still huge untapped potential in regional markets.
So far, about 30% of Australia’s outdoor inventory has been digitised, but this percentage is closer to 10% in regional areas.
Don’t get me wrong – I think the market will and should continue to digitise outdoor sites in metro areas. However, we also need to ramp up regional digitisation to really make the most of the enormous opportunity offered by DOOH, which I see as the most promising of the remaining mass broadcast mediums.
In my view, the relative lack of digitisation in regional areas does not reflect any corresponding lack of possibility. Rather, it is the result of structural characteristics and an absence of the accurate measurement tools that would allow technology such as programmatic advertising to really take off in such areas.
Tackling the challenges
The first of these is admittedly a tough hurdle to overcome. Of the three major out of home players in Australia, only one is in regional markets at scale.
The rest of the market comprises independent operators, and many of the owners of such companies are nearing retirement age. They may be unsure whether the investment in digital will pay off, which brings me to the second factor I see as holding regional markets back: the lack of measurement tools.
Fortunately, this issue is about to be solved, with the launch of MOVE 2.0 now imminent. The next iteration of Australia’s renowned outdoor advertising measurement system, MOVE, will include regional audiences for the first time, covering more than 100,000 OOH assets across the country and capturing both vehicular and pedestrian traffic.
I believe this will make marketers really pay attention to non-metro areas. As it stands, regional markets account for less than 20% of overall media revenue and this percentage is likely to be even lower for OOH. This reflects a serious under-representation in terms of ad dollars given regional areas are home to 35% of Australia’s population, a figure that is only likely to grow.
The migration from cities to regional Australia is well documented. A University of Sydney study led by Professor Nicole Gurran, which was published last month, found that in all years since 2007 except one, more people had left capital cities for regional areas than vice versa.
And while in some circles there’s still a view that regional populations are less valuable, the study noted that those who moved to regional areas tended to be older and have higher household wealth.
The fact there are many valuable consumers for advertisers to target should prompt a clear response from billboard owners: digitise regional assets. As these areas grow, so does demand for timely, flexible messaging. Digital infrastructure enables updates in real time and better alignment with evolving local audiences. In regions with low ad saturation, the impact is even greater. This isn’t about chasing hype. It’s about adapting to where Australia is heading.
A billboard in a regional market is not useful just as a medium for local advertisers to reach local people; national advertisers can also use such sites to great effect. Many in the regional population are just as interested in buying a European car as those who live in more urban areas.
An attentive audience
And thanks to Australia’s heavy reliance on such cars and the widespread lack of take-up of public transport – at least when compared with other countries – the regional audience is relatively easy to predict. It’s perhaps a step too far to describe it as a captive audience, but it’s certainly an attentive one compared with other forms of advertising.
While it would be difficult for a media buyer to be 100% sure of a TV or radio audience in four weeks’ time, the audience on any major road at 6pm on a Wednesday is much easier to predict. Australians are habitual when it comes to their vehicular journeys, at least outside of holiday periods and unexpected events such as pandemics and floods.
And whether they are on highways with paddocks in the background or on a main street in a town centre, billboards stand out in regional markets because such environments are typically less built up than metro areas.
Savvy marketers have already cottoned onto this, which goes some way to explaining why there is currently more demand than supply in regional markets.
Many existing sites are running at occupancy levels of 90%-plus, but with most boards still static, the number of advertisers that can be served by the existing stock is limited. If more of regional Australia’s boards become digitised, there’s huge potential to increase overall revenue by tapping into the increasing demand for more flexible and targeted outdoor campaigns.
Noel Cook is Managing Director at Wildstone Australia.