DOOH: Strong Growth in Advertising Spendings

In a shrinking advertising market, being able to report a significant increase in advertising spending rightfully earns the title of growth champion. According to a recent survey by Nielsen analysts, Out-of-Home (OOH) media secured this title. Both traditional and digital out-of-home advertising, fittingly aligned with the warm weather and their traditional outdoor locations, are experiencing robust growth.

In the first quarter of 2019, Out-of-Home (OOH) saw an 8.6 percent increase in gross advertising spendings, reaching 502 million euros, slightly surpassing the magical threshold of half a billion euros in gross advertising spendings. This propelled outdoor advertising to the position of the fastest-growing media class in the first three months of the current year. This growth occurred in an overall shrinking market, as total gross advertising spendings decreased for the first time in many years – by 1.2 percent, or 100 million euros, to 7.2 billion euros compared to the same period last year.

Outdoor advertising is trending

The real growth engine behind Out-of-Home is transport media, which have propelled gross advertising spendings for outdoor advertising into rapid motion. In straightforward terms, advertising on buses, trains, and other (urban) mobility platforms grew by a whopping 45.5 percent, resulting in gross advertising spendings skyrocketing to 140 million euros.

However, the true winner among outdoor advertising champions is primarily digital out-of-home (DOOH). DOOH saw a leap of 27 percent in terms of advertisers’ gross spending on digital outdoor advertising. In Q1 2019, advertising worth 150 million euros was booked, compared to 118 million euros in the first quarter of the previous year.

Although analog OOH ultimately leads with 351.2 million advertising euros, this is not the case for percentage growth. Here, DOOH is the clear winner. Conversely, the increase in billboard advertising was moderate. In comparison to the previous year, billboard advertising increased by 4 percent to 320 million euros in gross advertising spendings.

Out-of-Home Beats Mobile

Despite a nearly one-quarter increase (specifically, 23 percent) in advertising spendings for mobile channels, they only reached a total value of 285 million euros. This is slightly less than half of what Out-of-Home managed to garner in gross advertising spendings.

TV falls behind

Although television still attracts the most advertising money, it has suffered losses. Although TV accounted for almost half (47.4 percent) of all gross advertising spendings with 3.4 billion euros, it has still experienced a decrease of 2.7 percent.

Online advertising takes second place in terms of total gross advertising spendings. Advertisers invested a total of 820 million euros in online advertising in the first quarter of 2019, an increase of 6.1 percent compared to the first three months of 2018.

The bronze medal goes to radio. Agencies and businesses spent a total of 470 million euros (an increase of 1.6 percent compared to the same period last year) on radio advertising.