Commuters are back, but is OOH advertising?

Whether workers will ever resume commuting five days a week is a question that is on our minds in the industry, because if the shift to homeworking endures, it will also reshape outdoor advertising. According to media buyers Zenith, advertisers spent $40bn globally on OOH media in 2019, before Covid-19 ravaged the sector (a rise of almost 60 per cent from a decade earlier).

Billboards and posters have always retained their ability to reach broad sections of the population, but the channel was hard-hit when lockdown restrictions were imposed at the onset of the pandemic, prompting advertisers to slash spending.

Billboard sales did recover as traffic returned, but total expenditure on OOH declined 28 per cent last year to $29.1bn, according to Zenith.

However, there is a positive side to this. The pitch from the outdoor ad industry is that the audience is coming back, just in different places and at different times of day. For the reach of OOH advertising isn’t just the daily commute. Things like theatre, music and sporting events are back- as well as being able to use public transport and travel into city centres at weekends or in the evenings.

And Digital OOH  advertising holds big  promise, allowing the same space to be sold to multiple advertisers. We saw how public sector clients used the medium to promote health campaigns during the pandemic. Messages were tailored to localised restrictions in particular areas, and could be updated within hours of the rules changing.

For some advertisers, buses and trains are more appealing than ever. Laxman Narasimhan, chief executive of Reckitt Benckiser, said the maker of soaps and disinfectants was advertising more on public transport because prospective customers were particularly hygiene-conscious in such environments. “We want to be sure we are present in places where people have a high degree of germ sensitivity,” he added. The company’s Dettol brand launched a campaign telling London Tube passengers it was “here to support your journey”, touting hand sanitiser freely available at stations.

The first signs of a commuter revival in the capital appeared as London Underground recorded its busiest morning since the start of the pandemic – Rush-hour trips on the tube were up 17% , to just under a million – their highest since March 2020. Buses also saw 39% more passengers, according to Transport For London.

In August, almost two thirds of adults commuted to work, (61%) and it is set to reach 78% across September, bringing us close to pre-pandemic levels (85%). We now know that London Underground Audience levels are at 3.5 million passengers across the underground network- and to put this into perspective, this reach is bigger than Instagram’s weekly reach of Londoners and significantly (10 times bigger, in fact) than the weekly reach of major news brands such as The Sun, The Guardian and the Daily Mail.

So, all in all- OOH advertising is springing back strong.