With advances in data, technology and inventory, along with strong growth, OOH remains in great health. And that’s great news, but what we’re really excited about is what’s yet to come. Posterscope has gazed into the future to unearth what will help shape the 2020 OOH landscape, in what promises to be another thrilling year.

2. It’s not Google-able…
Yes, we can give rigorous evidence-based forecasts of the
rational - DOOH is growing, and saw growth of +17.1% in
Q3, comparable to Q2 (+17.2%) and stronger than Q1 2019
(+11%)… classic OOH is growing [Q3 (+2.4%), slightly up on
Q2 (+2.3%)… and the entire market is in great health [OOH in
the UK reporting growth of 9.8% YoY in Q3 2019].*
And that’s great news of course. But, our excitement should really
be reserved for what’s coming, not what has already been.
How that retrospective rigour needs future focus. It’s simple
physics: if we’re looking back, we can’t also be looking forwards.
There’s no denying that what has come before provides security;
a comfort in turbulent and unpredictable times... But it’s this realm
of ‘next’ that provides us with myriad opportunities to build, sculpt,
code, and invent the future of OOH.
There is quite literally
only one certainty about
predictions, and that is
how “the future is not
Google-able”.
William Gibson
*Source: Outsmart Nov 2019

3. ... but it is buildable
We’re all architects of that future; burdened by the responsibility of
building it. A future that will be fuelled by technology, data,
collaboration, and good old-fashioned creative thinking.
So, we may ask - and be asked - what exactly will the future hold?
And our answer will always be:
‘Whatever we want it to be’.
The future will be whatever those that dare to dream, to create,
to invent, to question, to analyse, to think…decide it will be.
The future is certainly not Google-able.
But it is buildable.
So, let’s crack on.
“The future belongs
to those who can
hear it coming”.
David Bowie

4. *Source: Outsmart, August 2019
CREATIVE
THINKING
Where we’re going,we don’t
need roads: supercharging
DOOH bandwidth to
build a new frontier
Data Revolutions: Diversification
of datasets and creative
interpretation/ supercharges
planning and creativity
Rise of the machines:
the story of automation
continues
No brand is an island: tech
collaborations drive
innovation
The great outdoors:
opportunities to DOOH
the right thing
Wild Minds: The much-needed
return to creativity and creative
thinking… TURN IT UP!
FUEL OF
INNOVATION
The more we turn the dial on creative
thinking, the more we turn the dial on
everything we do
5G Data Automation Tech Partners Purpose
Turning the dial on creative thinking
turns the dial on everything we do:
fuelling innovation

5. 5G - supercharging bandwidth
to build a new DOOH frontier
EE switched on the UK’s first 5G network on May 30th, heralding
a new era of superfast connectivity. But what does it actually
mean? In the future, these are the kind of bandwidths required to
fuel smart cities, to pick up the pace on the glitchy IoT, to push on
cloud gaming and live movie streaming, and to make a reality of
autonomous driving. And right now, download speeds are already
10x faster than 4G (on average 510Mbps according to
The Verge), meaning we can explore the possibility of
turning DOOH into a network of connected content
portals (download speeds will mean that instead of taking over
an hour to download a movie, it will take just 35 seconds, or just 8
seconds to download two seasons of a boxset).
Low latency (the time lapse in which a device and mobile tower
exchange data) will bring about a real revolution to the AR
world, which in turn will augment the DOOH landscape.
We’re already seeing this starting to happen with partnerships
between Nexus Studios, Samsung, the Dallas Cowboys and
AT&T who have rolled out the world’s first jaw-dropping AR Cloud
activations; mapping the digital world over the physical world to
build all-new experiences.
And with that revolution will come a sizeable improvement in
location data. Service providers will be building and installing
multiple antenna to distribute 5G, and our devices will give off
multiple pings meaning game-changing improvements in location
targeting.
Key OOH Points: The new era of connectivity opens a realm of
possibilities in OOH
A new era in connectivity

6. Data revolutions
We are swimming in almost infinite data lakes. And the key to
staying afloat is understanding exactly what data we are using,
why we are using it, and how we are using it. For example, using
only one source of data in planning location-based campaigns is
never a good idea. Our data strategy, for example, is based on the
principle of ‘no single point of truth’.
We already use 33 different location data vendors and ingest,
fuse and overlay these in multiple combinations to create the very
best solution for each campaign. And this is only going to increase
and evolve.
The world leaves digital footprints as deep pools of data
sets, many of which exist outside of what we consider the norm
(weather/temp/traffic etc.) in advertising activation.
But it’s not just about turbocharging targeting, we will see
the ongoing shift towards using data to derive exciting insights
and forge new ways to interpret and apply these findings. After all,
everything happens somewhere, so therefore using location as the
lens to examine various data sets and extrapolate insight is the
ultimate in understanding on-the-go human behaviour.
Data is going nowhere. So, if you can’t get out of it, get into it.
Key OOH Points: Diversification of datasets and creative
interpretation/application supercharges planning and creativity
Different strokes for folks

7. Rise of the machines
Programmatic has been the talking point of the OOH industry for
the past few years. But has anyone delivered it? Not yet.
So, let’s do a little myth-busting... if you Google ‘Programmatic
OOH’ the search results page will be populated with ‘industry-first’
press releases with varying degrees of legitimacy. At its core, the
reason for this is that programmatic means different things for
different people - meaning that ‘industry-firsts’ are more evolution
than finish-line.
Programmatic OOH to many is the vision of bringing
real-time bidding to the table - where a client can bid for
an audience on a marketplace. This is NOT something that
the industry is currently able to deliver - there is no widely
accepted real-time audience reporting metric that can support the
weight of this and any purported marketplaces are either limited
in inventory access or have human intervention to make them run
(often both).
2020 will see our approach to programmatic continue to develop
and evolve; a very simple story of DOOH…only when you
need it, triggered by agreed data parameters.
2020 will also see the continued development of this
programmatic dream playing out to varying degrees across the
entire global industry...
Key OOH Point: Programmatic DOOH will continue its evolution
at pace
The automation story in DOOH continues

8. No brand is an island
We’re seeing this happen everywhere, for example auto
manufacturers are brokering deep partnerships with major global
tech companies (and academic STEM research facilities such as
MIT) to pioneer new products and evolutions in this ever-shifting
marketplace, e.g., Toyota + Microsoft // Nissan + NASA //
Jaguar Land Rover + Waymo // BMW + IBM. To win the future,
we have to forge strategic partnerships.
For OOH, the possibilities are vast… we are perhaps the only
channel that has the opportunity to truly build innovation
into solutions by applying technology and thinking from
other disciplines; engineering, robotics, 3D volumetric display,
AR, visual search, data, gesture control, haptics, facial recognition,
voice search, ad infinitum…
We can’t give away all our secrets, but we’re already playing
hard in this space and have relationships with multiple tech
start-ups, content providers, data providers, developers,
creative tech studios… with many more to follow next year.
This collaborative trend will continue to playout in 2020 and
beyond, in ways we haven’t even dreamed of yet.
Key OOH Points: Cross-discipline tech partnerships will change
what’s possible in the OOH industry
Tech collaborations drive innovation

9. DOOH the right thing
One of OOH’s greatest strengths (existing in the physical and
non-skippable world), also means that as an industry we must
continue working towards sustainable solutions for
brands in the out-of-home space.
UK media owners are developing extraordinary solutions for
advertisers, and the roll-out of products with a long-term
outlook towards minimising impact to the planet should
of course be applauded… and utilised.
2020 will see us all looking to disciplines that exist
outside of OOH and advertising, for it is there that we
will find the most meaningful of partnerships, solutions, and
innovations with real tangible purpose.
Explorations into synthetic bioluminescent lighting,
alternative energy sources, pollution-eating algae,
reflective inks, kinetic energy transfer, and many more will
evolve quickly - driven by client and consumer demand, and our
innate desire to invent responsible long-term solutions within
our industry.
Key OOH Point: Cross-discipline partnerships will drive changes
for good in the OOH industry
OOH with purpose

10. According to the recent Peter Field/IPA report ‘The crisis in
creative effectiveness’, as a result of the ongoing frenzy for short-
term metrics, creativity (and long-term brand building) is collapsing.
And it’s something we all see every day… Field states that ‘we
have arrived in an era where award-winning creativity typically
brings little or no effectiveness advantage’.
Advertising has forgotten how to have fun. We’re an industry
of privilege, in that we are paid to build real-world emotional
responses between brands and people. That’s the long and short
of it. And OOH especially should be fun! Of late however, we have
seen a demand for skewing towards chasing hard short-term
metric after hard short-term metric.
So it’s time to change. Because the short-term and the long-term
doesn’t have to be an either/or choice. And we know that 85%
of CMOs*** believe that creativity and big ideas build brands and
create emotional connections that will deliver long-term brand
growth, yet only half of these CMOs think the industry is doing
this well.
And the reams of evidence supporting creativity as the greatest
effectiveness tool should be ignored at every brands peril. And that
doesn’t just mean ‘do more special builds’, it means applying more
creative thinking to everything we do in the quest for solutions that
resonate with real people.
Great creative thinking is what decides the winners in this business
of brands – across all disciplines. Whether in unearthing beautiful
human insights, that in turn inform tight and powerful strategies,
that then provide a platform from which to fire beautifully crafted
and focused concepts… whatever the area of business, 2020 will
find us learning to value true creative thinking again (and giving
people the space and time to do this), not as a ‘nice to have’ but
rather to reframe it as non-negotiable hygiene factor.
Because *gulp* not everything that counts can be counted…
Key OOH Points: Building better experiences and inspirational
work will improve effectiveness
The much-needed return to creativity
A wild mind and
a disciplined eye**
**Source: Dorothy Parker ***Source: Dentsu Aegis Network CMO study 2018