When consumers take a break from smartphones, connected TVs, and computer screens, outdoor advertising is often there, promoting products and services on billboards and transit displays. Still, out-of-home (OOH) channels have also gone increasingly digital – today, online and programmatic solutions drive the industry's expansion worldwide. Mid-2023 estimates indicated that
half as fast as the digital OOH (or DOOH) subsegment between 2023 and 2025.
Similarly, some of the
global market's largest players reported increases in DOOH revenues in 2023 that were two to three times higher than their overall revenue growth. This moment of transformation could suggest that the sector is ready to revolutionize the presentation and distribution of outdoor ads. However, change might come at a slower pace. During a worldwide
survey among static OOH ad inventory owners published in early 2024, almost two-thirds planned to digitize no more than one-quarter of their catalogues. Less than five percent intended to computerize more than half of their inventories.
JCDecaux: an industry leader still in recovery
This giant, headquartered in the suburbs of the Paris metropolitan area, France, has ranked first among the
world's top outdoor ad companies for years. Today, its vast display network covers a long list of territories, from Australia to Chile, the United States to Japan. Despite its enormity, the firm still struggles to catch up with pre-pandemic results. COVID-19's impact on consumer behavior – namely in outdoor moving and digital media consumption – posed an unparalleled challenge to the industry. Thus, a third consecutive year of growth in
JCDecaux's revenue did not suffice to reach its 2019 or even 2018 results. The same logic applies to
JCDecaux's net income: Its gains between 2021 and 2023 barely covered two-thirds of the loss reported in 2020.
CCO's new plan: concentrate in the homeland
While JCDecaux reported successive gains and virtual worldwide omnipresence,
Clear Channel Outdoor seems to be going in the opposite direction. In 2023, CCO recorded its seventh consecutive net loss. This suggests that its problems precede any cross-country lockdown. Whereas
CCO's revenue in 2023 amounted to less than 80 percent of its 2019 result, the 2019 figure amounted to little more than 90 percent of the 2014 revenue. The solution? Perhaps a multinational yard sale. Throughout 2023, CCO got rid of part of its European operations, selling the branch in Italy to JCDecaux and passing on its businesses in France, Switzerland, and Spain. The New York City-based company also intends to sell out operations in the rest of Europe, as well as in Latin America. Therefore, it would focus even more on Canada and the U.S. – which, along with the activities in Caribbean airports, already accounted for some 60 percent of
CCO's results in 2023.
The future of OOH: ubiquity over digitization?
During the aforementioned study among global static OOH ad inventory owners, more than half selected additional OOH displays, marketing their existing assets, and improving operational efficiency as their
business investment priorities. Digitizing static displays ranked fourth, cited by little more than 40 percent of respondents. The focus on their current displays reflects the
OOH segment's top challenges, according to that same sample: Inventory availability, proposal management, and proof-of-performance (or PoP, i.e., verifying that an ad has been installed as required). Those results indicate that physical expansion remains more relevant than digitizing catalogues. Another source projects that, while DOOH will grow at a significantly faster pace,
traditional outdoor media revenues will still account for more than half of worldwide investments in this channel by the end of the decade. Digital displays are pushing the results, but static media remains a safer bet on a global scale.
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