We Are Social - Advertising 2.0

Robin Grant

Revolution have a good overview of the current state of digital outdoor. Worth a read.

Update: Dennis Sullivan's comment piece on Netimperative and Deborah Bonello's article in NMA are also worth reading.

Is it a poster? Or a website? TV or rich media? Digital advertising or above-the-line? All or none of the above? The rise of digital out-of-home advertising is a call to arms for all of the UK's creative companies, particularly the new media fraternity. As a predicted boom in the growing medium approaches, are new media agencies up to the challenge or could they be in danger of missing out on the action?

It's a question for clients as well. Advertisers who visited CBS Outdoor's (formerly Viacom Outdoor) demonstration suite for its digital displays on the London Underground brought their above-the-line or outdoor shops as well as digital specialists along with them. And when the media owner announced the results of its digital advertising competition last week, the winner was not a digital shop but Hooper Galton, which holds the above-the-line account for homelessness charity Shelter.

Let's go outside
What's at stake is one of the fastest-growing mediums in the UK. The Outdoor Advertising Association (OAA) predicts investment in digital out-of-home formats will balloon in 2007. Last year, investment in new outdoor advertising technologies accounted for 4% of growth in outdoor. The OAA believes that figure could reach 16% in 2007 and that by the end of the year outdoor could generate £100m from digital alone.

What's more, the amount of money spent purely on digital outdoor advertising is predicted to more than double in 2007; it will rise by a massive 84% to £53.1m, according to the OAA.

All the outdoor media owners are getting involved. As well as CBS Outdoor's digital media for the Tube, JCDecaux has won the outdoor contract for BAA, which includes the outdoor media for the new Terminal 5 contract at Heathrow. Titan Outdoor already runs its Transvision network of digital screens across the major UK railway stations, and Clear Channel owns ten 48-sheet-sized digital screens across London.

Alan James, chief executive of the OAA, says, "We have one enormous thing that will transform the use of digital screens this year, which is the London Underground. Everything needs a catalyst and that's going to be it. It's going to be visible because it's in London and most people use the Tube at one point or another."

So if the OAA is to be believed, outdoor digital advertising will soon be big business. While the traditional sector wakes up to this fact, new media agencies are ahead of the game. "At the moment we're finding that specialist digital agencies or smaller digital production houses are putting out the work," says John Lewen, account director of Alive, CBS Outdoor's digital arm.

AKQA's work for search brand Yell.com, for example, featured interactive bus shelters, panels and digital six-sheets, and put the concept of local knowledge at the centre of the campaign by letting passers-by to do location-based searches. Glue London's design arm Anorak has also produced work for the Alive network, and Agency.com ran a successful digital outdoor campaign for BA last year using Titan's Transvision network.

Some digital agencies, such as R/GA, are also developing their own technology. "Any agency that's serious about outdoor digital advertising should be developing its own applications," says R/GA chief technology officer John Mayo-Smith. "We've been developing interactive applications for more than ten years, enabling us to drive innovation and build awareness for our clients."

The new media specialists argue that outdoor digital creativity is right up their street because of the interactivity involved. Nick Corston, head of new business development at Agency.com, says, "The discriminating factor is the level of interactivity. It's often that which is the defining factor because you have to understand the power of the activity and its potential. You also have to be able to deliver on it, and getting those skills to understand and deliver will be the forte of the interactive and digital agencies."

Nigel Gwilliam, head of outdoor and digital at the IPA, advises digital agencies to build their understanding of the medium: how is it consumed, who are the main players (contractor and outdoor media agency), and what technical opportunities and limitations exist. "Then leverage your in-house production facilities in order to get your hands dirty."

Digital agency de-construct does a lot of outdoor work for P&G and Nokia. Business development director Dan Douglas says that "Outdoor 2.0" has arrived, but that seeing the emerging technologies just in terms of digital poster sites misses the point. He believes it's the convergence of mobile, web, retail, installation art, ambient media, event and experiential marketing, and digital poster sites that will define the future.

"Digital technology has not only made it a lot easier to interact outdoors through multiple channels and devices, but our experience from participating online in a variety of ways makes it a simpler cultural leap to participating outdoors, where we can and do form communities around shared experiences," says Douglas.

Matt Dyke, planning director at Tribal DDB, also puts a strong case. "Above-the-line agencies may feel they're best placed to create beautiful moving film images, but movement is only scratching the surface of what digital outdoor really means," he says. "In the long term, it's the digital agencies that will be best placed to get the most out of the new medium. Not only are they already experts at creating interactive formats - which requires creative and media to work together as one and is something above-the-line agencies seem unable to do - but they're used to dealing with live content."

The confidence of the digital specialists isn't putting off above-the-line agencies, which have been working in this area both independently and with outdoor specialists.

Peter Beeney, head of digital at Titan, says, "Planner/buyers are becoming more informed and hence more comfortable with including digital outdoor on their schedules. As the formats become demystified, traditionally risk-averse advertisers use digital screens more and more."

Some of the most talked-about campaigns include Walsh Trott Chick Smith and Grand Visual's push for newspaper The Independent on London Underground escalator panels, and Abbott Mead Vicker's use of Transvision for the BBC's Planet Earth series. This area of activity promises to rise once investment increases.

Graham Fink, creative director at M&C Saatchi, says that his recently rejigged creative department includes specialists across all media. He sees the divide between above- and below-the-line as ultimately a false one. "Ideas are the most important thing and we have one of the best creative departments in London, so we can put digital into any channel," he says.

Drawing battle lines
Experts predict that competition in this sector during the coming year will be fierce, and expect a turf war over the new area of business and expertise. But it won't be as polarised as digital agencies versus above-the-line shops.

"There will definitely be some fights and squabbles over this," says the OAA's James. "We've seen this before with smaller companies coming into the market. They feed off a territory that existing agencies think of as their own. There will be a big turf war, but don't write off existing agencies when there's big money to be made."

There's an overlap between the skillsets housed in established ad agencies and new media specialists. Traditional agencies have been making posters and TV ads for years, but the strength of the new media shops in designing interactive rich-media experiences is enormous.

The relevant skillsets also vary depending on the job at hand. Alive's cross-track network, for instance, will carry moving-image advertising along Tube platforms. Arguably, there's more synergy between that and the skills of an agency used to producing TV and cinema ads than with those of a new media company.

Conversely, when it comes to plasma screens like those on escalators or interactive bus shelters, a web agency - used to grabbing the attention of people without the use of sound and encouraging them to get involved - might be more competent.

There's also scope for joint ventures or relationships such as the one which exists between Tonic and CBS Outdoor.

"I think you'll see strategic alliances, and there'll be some areas where digital agencies take a greater role because of client relationships, creative ability or production facilities," says the IPA's Gwilliam. "It's a bit dangerous to just talk about a turf war - in reality, the lines are far more blurred in that some creative agencies have pretty successful internal digital thinking and continue to explore that."

CBS Outdoor's Lewen adds, "This is a new space. At the moment no one really owns it, so for agencies really prepared to get involved and learn fast and first, there's great potential to develop a level of expertise in this area."

There's everything to play for. Although the methods of working will be varied, competition promises to be fierce due to the huge amount of revenue that's up for grabs.