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If you’ve noticed that more and more billboards have become, essentially, giant TV screens, then you’re watching the out-of-home (OOH) industry slowly grow into something resembling the online ad industry.
This week, a Santa Monica, California-based startup called AdQuick launched its first product, a platform that is designed to manage the OOH ecosystem — including bus shelters, bench stops, or displays on the sides of buildings, as well as billboards.
But the industry still has a ways to go. Founder and CEO Matthew O’Connor told me that well over 90 percent of OOH displays are still “static,” non-electronic displays.
This has resulted in ad inventory that is plagued by huge inefficiencies, he said, such as a vacancy rate as high as 40 percent because advertisers can’t quickly find out about, buy, turn over, or supply many display opportunities. But eventually, O’Connor predicted, the outdoor display space will become fully online, and will evolve into a programmatic ecosystem similar to online ads.
He added that his company’s platform is the first that enables completely-online, self-service booking of outdoor ads, as well as offering the ability to transmit the ad content to appropriate electronic displays. And, he said, it’s the first to offer an OOH campaign analytics dashboard.
[Read the full article on MarTech Today.]
