Paul Wilkinson.
While streaming investment is on the rise, the premium broadcast channel advertisers are turning to right now is outdoor. Hatched’s Paul Wilkinson looks at the data.
If there’s one thing that strikes me looking at the most recent SMI figures, it’s that advertisers have quietly repositioned outdoor media as a premium broadcast channel.
According to the data, out-of-home has compounded at around 6% annually since 2016 and crossed $1.4 billion in net media revenue in 2025 – effectively doubling the size of the market in under a decade, now accounting for roughly 17% of total Australian ad spend. That's a serious result, and the momentum continues to roll.
People seem to overlook that, outside of the literal meaning, OOH is far from a static channel. It's a dynamic, broadcast medium that, like television, delivers mass reach in a “one to many” format with one ad reaching an audience of many. With outdoor, there’s zero ability to skip, scroll, or stream your way out of it.
In a media landscape where consolidated audience attention is increasingly hard to find and increasingly expensive to buy, that's a genuinely powerful proposition.
If you need any evidence, just look at how QMS has been quietly moving into territory that television used to own outright. As the official outdoor media partner of the Australian Olympic Committee, QMS built a fully sold-out Winter Games network for Milano Cortina 2026. At Paris 2024, the network reportedly reached 11.5 million Australians and dynamically served more than 81,000 pieces of real-time content. Much more than just a billboard play, this is a broadcast proposition, complete with the sponsorship, cultural alignment, and audience metrics to prove it.
Television, of course, remains the gold standard for emotional storytelling and big cultural moments. The AFL grand final, a prime-time drama, a breaking news event – the depth of engagement has been proven time and again. And despite the headlines about fragmenting audiences, TV still does something no other medium can: it puts your brand in front of two million people in 30 seconds. That capability hasn’t disappeared, but it is arguably becoming more challenged.
Savvy marketers aren't abandoning television; they're extending it and, with that, spreading their spend across the board. OOH is a major beneficiary of this shift.
The ongoing digitisation of out-of-home inventory has made it easier to buy both traditionally and programmatically, with shorter lead times and lower production costs. And with the outdoor measurement MOVE now fully updated and launched to market, the expectation is that outdoor will continue to grow.
The digitisation of OOH has made that extension far more powerful. In many ways, it represents the meeting of the literal offline world with the online one – the physical environment of a city street or shopping centre finally gaining the intelligence and responsiveness that digital channels have long taken for granted.
And the money is clearly paying attention; Nine Entertainment’s A$850 million investment into QMS is testament to that. A very deliberate statement showcasing where growth lives. Nine's CEO framed the deal as creating an "unparalleled advertising proposition spanning from sofa to street," a phrase that neatly captures the complementary logic.
Then we have oOh!media’s two competing takeover bids – A$1.40 from Pacific Equity Partners and A$1.45 from infrastructure investor I Squared Capital. When private equity and infrastructure funds are in a bidding war over your sector, the growth thesis is well and truly established.
As Australia's cities get busier, urban density increases and commuter corridors continue to grow, OOH is in prime position. The physical world isn't going anywhere, and neither is the medium built within it. And clearly, the money has already worked that out.
Paul Wilkinson is the Client and Investment Lead at media agency Hatched.