Outdoor Network has taken the next step in the continued growth of its national footprint and digital-focused development strategy, with the milestone achievement of its 10th digital site in South Africa, meaning the out of home market leader is in a position to offer increased value to advertisers.
The new state-of-the-art 3m x 6m rotating digital billboard is situated in Pietermaritzburg and brings to five the number of Outdoor Network digital sites in KwaZulu-Natal, with the balance of the 10 sites in Pretoria/Tshwane (two), Johannesburg/Gauteng (one), Mbombela/Mpumalanga (one) and Polokwane/Limpopo (one) – all highly sought-after and key high-traffic locations, offering attractive upper income audiences.
The 10 sites, combined, provide brands and advertisers with an average national reach of approximately 1.34 million consumers monthly, which represents 8.9% of the South African adult population, whilst this national digital platform is ideal for customers looking to engage with an upper income audience, as it reaches in the region of 845,000 consumers in this high income segment – about 9.7% of the country’s consumers in this category.
“The achievement of our 10th digital site is a milestone, but we are just getting started,” says Jacques du Preez, CEO of Provantage Media Group. “Outdoor Network’s broader strategy is to provide brands and advertisers with a highly desirable national footprint in key, high-demand metropolitan areas. Digital, which currently makes up about 20% of our business, plays a key role in this strategic growth plan and the company intends to invest substantially in its digital inventory – in the form of small format rotating billboards – in the coming years, so that we can provide advertisers with even more value.”
Digital OOH represents a significant step forward in the evolution of outdoor advertising and provides advertisers with increased options and in the case of the Outdoor Network’s digital OOH platform, the ability to deliver a national campaign on one network, whilst the rotating billboards offer immense value in terms of coverage, thanks to their ability to tailor and deliver specific messaging for targeted audiences at different times of the day.
Further to that, digital OOH integrates more efficiently with social media than any other medium and is able to deliver immense value to advertisers and brands through improved recall, engagement and search, as detailed by the 2017 ‘Advertising Effectiveness – PJSC Study and Recall Comparison Analysis’. This report studied the five primary advertising channels and found that digital OOH – including digital billboards, digital-placed based networks and digital signage – returned an ‘advertising recall’1 of 82% compared with that of printed OOH (67%), TV (62%), desktop online (57%), mobile online (52%), and print (52%).
The growth of Outdoor Network’s expanding digital network is significant for brands seeking a cutting-edge platform that delivers regional and national coverage in high reach and frequency locations. Further, as evidenced by international studies – such as that already cited – DOOH has the ability to meet the needs of a dynamic multi-brand strategy, whilst also offering significant levels of recall, engagement and brand awareness.
- Advertising recall defined as “advertising effectiveness in which respondents were exposed to an advertisement and then at a later point in time, respondents were asked if they remembered the advertisement on an aided or unaided basis.”