OVAB Media Summit. Was It A Game-Changer?

The OVAB Digital Media Summit was in my opinion, writes Manolo Almagro from New York, a HUGELY successful and inspiring event. The carefully crafted panel sessions from different ad agency disciplines (Creative, Research, Planners and Clients) gave an excellent snapshot of where US agencies stand on DOOH.

Here are my highlights …

• Ad Agencies and their clients are slowly adapting media budgets and campaigns to include DOOH as a small part of their total media spend.
• Creatives are cautiously treading into the realm of a 8-10 second ad experience but aren’t yet sure how best to exploit the media. Most of the time, creative executions for DOOH are “left-overs”, rather than the main meal.
• Media Research doesn’t want to see CPM data. They want and need more conclusive DOOH research that is served up in a way that they can understand how it compares to other digital media segments, They also want more context on how the data was gathered and analyzed – and they want it spoon fed to them!
• Strategic Media Planners face a huge challenge in convincing clients to experiment, let alone actually deploy campaigns on OOH networks. After understanding what their clients expect their advertising to do, they then have to find the appropriate DOOH media/venues that will meet these objectives. This is where they need help. So many venues/networks. So little time…
• Some big budget clients are willing to experiment with DOOH media, for instance, ConAgra and Hotels.com plan on increasing their current DOOH allocations but are still cautious about poaching budgets from other media. Other companies like Kraft and the History Channel want more performance metrics in place before they start making significant changes to their allocations.
• Overall media spend in 2009 will be flat (not increasing) but still include DOOH. Clients predict media that proves to be more efficient in reaching customers is what will win in the fight for budget.

Although these highlights could be read as a ‘huge list of work to be done’ – no doubt there is, Ed I am convinced that all of OVAB’s efforts are an absolute game changer.

I have always been of the mindset that getting the ad agencies to bring legitimacy to the DOOH industry is the only way to truly scale the industry, which is exactly what we are witnessing now.

OVAB have an impressive who’s who on their advisory board ^[1] and also seem to have got all of the DOOH networks themselves ^[2] pulling in the same direction.

That’s no mean feat! All in all, I would have to say that “yes, this week has been a game changer”

In comparison to POPAI and their “digital industry standards” ^[3] initiative, frankly it would seem that trying to create technical standards for an industry that is still in a technology “land-grab” mode is much like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Creating interoperability between platforms won’t go very far in getting agencies to embrace DOOH will it? Unlike what OVAB has done of course!

I’m betting that OVAB pulls this off and actually gets better.