DOOH is the heir to Broadcast TV
Channel: Quividi
Date: 2017-05-14

Did you know DOOH is set to be the heir of broadcast TV?

Nobody was ever fired for buying broadcast TV. That is until they were. TV’s share of the ad market is in free-fall decline and Interpublic’s Magna estimates that in 2017 digital media will overtake the incumbent king of ad budgets for the first time ever. Many have seen this coming, but few are seeing DOOH, and not online video, as its big successor.

What makes me say this? It is about the nature of the medium.
SitoMobile’s Mike Gamaroff, a real smart cookie, wrote an excellent guest post on digital signage pulse titled “Programmatic buying for digital out-of-home: A solution looking for a problem”. I invite you to read it for yourselves, but what really jumped out at me was the diagram in which he contrasts Online vs Outdoor. Online has massive supply, rates low in viewability and high in attribution. Outdoor, on the other hand, has limited supply, high viewability and low attribution. That sounds a heck of a lot like broadcast TV to me!

I’m not the only one to think so, JCDecaux in the UK famously rebranded much of its digital network “Channel 6” and is selling it like a TV channel. It even recently launched City Channel in the City of London which provides business-focused editorial content from Press Association and Bloomberg. While this content production is a far cry from what we would consider broadcast TV, even now the audience reach is getting quite competitive and perhaps has even more impact that its TV counterparts over there.

So why DOOH and not online video as the rightful heir to the “safe” ad buy crown? Because why would anyone ever watch a program with ads again if they can pay a subscription service and get the content they want on demand from a service like Netflix or HBO. Online video ads are also fraught with fraud and do not deliver the same shared common experience and halo effect that broadcast TV delivers. That is why as time rolls on, Barry’s idea to brand the DPAA’s its annual summit the Video Everywhere Conference is proven to be more and more genius. 

Chapeau, Barry. Chapeau.

In conclusion, even if DOOH does not capture the lion’s share of the TV budgets over the next few years, it may still rise to become the largest media category by spend. As the old media shake-up reaches its stunning finally, DOOH will shine as the last true broadcast medium.

Shinobi seeing you!