Environmentally friendly and with a large scope: Why DooH could continue its upward trajectory in 2024 is explained by Frank Goldberg from IDOOH in the invidis annual commentary.
The new year is still young, and predicting what the coming weeks and months will bring is like looking into a crystal ball. However, one thing is already certain: Sustainability and Green Media will occupy us even more intensely than they did in 2023.
Despite Digital-out-of-Home having one of the best ecological footprints in intermedia comparison, our common goal must be to further reduce the CO2 emissions of our media type to preserve Earth as a habitable planet for future generations. This is a responsibility we owe to those who come after us. If that’s not reason enough, the economic necessity to act will ultimately persuade us: the EU’s Sustainability Reporting Directive came into force in early 2023. This means that from 2024 onwards, more companies are obligated to report on Corporate Sustainability. Consequently, there’s increased pressure on advertisers to have a ‘green’ approach in their marketing efforts. And this pressure will inevitably trickle down to the advertising and communication industry.
A proven and comparatively simple method to make advertising more environmentally friendly lies in intelligent media planning – Green Media. Media expert Thomas Koch, at the IDOOH conference last autumn, illustrated through various campaign examples how slight shifts towards low-carbon media such as Audio, DooH, or Online Display significantly reduce the carbon footprint of each campaign without compromising their respective KPIs.
Sustainability Events
The Digital-out-of-Home (DooH) industry seized almost every opportunity last year to position itself consistently as one of the most environmentally friendly media, whether in trade publications, our newly established Academy, or at significant industry events. For instance, the “DOOH Lounge” at the OMR or the initiation of the Green CMO Awards, which we jointly present with W&V annually to marketing experts making their media and marketing responsibilities measurably ‘greener.’
We’ll continue and intensify this sustainability initiative in 2024. Among other things, we’ll develop specific measures in the new “Green DooH” working group to improve the overall environmental impact of Digital-out-of-Home as a media type and individual industry participants.
Planning P&PS 3.0
However, even the most eco-friendly medium is only relevant for the advertising industry if it can demonstrate the appropriate planning data. With the “IDOOH Public & Private Screens 2.0” presented last February – right on IDOOH’s first anniversary – we captured the performance metrics and target audience data of all indoor DooH advertisers in Germany. Still, as a second major theme for 2024, we aim to swiftly develop this into “IDOOH Public & Private Screens 3.0.” Its realization could be considered a “quantum leap” in performance measurement for DooH media: leveraging mass data from large geotracking panels combined with population-representative surveys, we’ll be able to granularly plan Digital-out-of-Home down to individual location levels, making it even more attractive for Programmatic Advertising. Speaking of Programmatic: as most of the reach recorded in “IDOOH P&PS 2.0” is already automated for booking and playback, and with many more providers working on programmatic products, it may only be a matter of weeks or months before the DooH market is nearly entirely connected to the Programmatic universe. This elevates digital screens in public spaces to a whole new level as a medium.
The rapid spread of Programmatic DooH in recent months has contributed to Out-of-Home advertising nearly reaching the magical ten percent market share in the overall advertising market in Germany. To achieve and ultimately surpass this goal even faster, at the end of last year, we entered into a partnership with the Out-of-Home Advertising Association. Both associations will collaborate even more closely, working on, among other things, a market-media study applicable to the entire Out-of-Home advertising market. While the final Nielsen figures for 2023 for Digital-out-of-Home were not available at the editorial deadline, given the excellent individual results of recent months – September: +22 percent, October: +19 percent, November: +32 percent – and an average market share within Out-of-Home advertising of 40 percent, it’s likely that the industry has achieved a record result for the third consecutive time. And the chances are more than good that we will continue this streak of success into 2024.
