Renowned ad agency group WPP predicts strong recovery for Out of Home

Speaking at the World Out of Home Organization’s virtual European Forum in an interview with WOO President Tom Goddard, Mark forecast rises of 31% this year and 41% next for the UK and 22% and 20% respectively for the US. He highlighted the importance of digital OOH, which has grown by 15% at a time when OOH overall declined by 30%.

“The key question is where OOH fits in an commerce dominated business world,” he said. “OOH builds brands, raises awareness and gives brands stature, and with OOH now being increasingly digitised, this adds the strengths of giving campaigns more relevance and speed and the ability to be tailored to time of day, different audiences and updated messages. Continuing digitisation should enable the medium to move up from its seven per cent share of global ad revenue.”

“If I were running a campaign for WPP I’d probably put it on OOH in major airports. I’d certainly much rather be running an OOH media company than a magazine or newspaper these days,” said Mark.

He also warned of the danger of clients putting greater investment into performance media than brand building media and was sceptical of the trend for client in-housing where agency teams work from their clients’ offices.

 “A number of WPP firms already provide this service, notably The&Partnership and Hogarth, and we can make our offerings faster, more agile, more responsive and reduce the volume and cost of content.

“But when everyone is working remotely I don’t know why clients want to obsess about in-housing when there is no house for them to be in. We’ve been working remotely and our revenues and client satisfaction scores have still gone up. I think it’s challenging enough for our clients to run their businesses as it is without running creative organisations.”

Mark confirmed WPP’s commitment to zero carbon emissions and said that the group would use its power of its $60 billion billings to drive change in the industry in the next nine years.