Source: Campaign - Caitlin Fitzsimmons

The outdoor ad industry has been talking the digital talk for sometime, but it seems reality is finally starting to match rhetoric.

The past year was marked by a slew of major launches - from theopening of Heathrow Terminal 5 to the launch of two major networks ofdigital roadside billboards, as well as continuing digital expansion onthe London Underground and mainline rail stations. Previously, thedigital outdoor sector was a tale of two halves - highly targetedofferings such as screens in gyms or hairdressers that actually existedin the here and now, versus the grand plans of the big players thatwere mostly yet to come to fruition. Now the big boys have come out toplay and digital outdoor is no longer just a niche opportunity.

Julie France, the managing director of JCDecaux Airport, saysdigital outdoor is still in its infancy but is growing. "The industryis on a digital journey and we're at the beginning of that," she says."People have said that before, but the thing that is different now isthat we're getting critical mass and ... that's what will drive it."

Posters and billboards are one of the oldest forms of advertisingand the medium prospered in the 20th century as a complement totelevision - great for mass-market campaigns and iconic brand-buildingstrategies. With flagging television ratings and falling newspaper andmagazine circulations, this traditional strength of outdoor is morevital than ever. But digital adds an entirely new dimension - it takesoutdoor into the 21st century and makes it sexy. Creative types have abrand new canvas to play with, while media planners have targetingopportunities their forebears could only dream of. It's outdoor onViagra.

CREATIVE

The digital outdoor sector is still in an era of experimentation andthere is no standardisation. Most are silent, but the screens come in abewildering array of types, from 48-sheet to four-sheet, portrait tolandscape, animated to static, five-second slots to 60-second loops,and standalone to networked. Many creative agencies enlist the help ofspecialists such as Grand Visual and Rocket Renders to help navigatetheir way through this new world.

Neil Morris, the managing director of Grand Visual, recalls the"made to mix" campaign last year for Bacardi. He worked closely withthe creative agency Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R, the mediaagency Universal McCann and the poster buying specialist Kinetic. "Itran on nine networks and there were 140 individual pieces of copy ...so it was absolutely essential to have Grand Visual sitting there atthe heart of the process," Morris says. Similarly, Ivan Clark, the headof digital at Kinetic, says he often plays an advisory role to creativeagencies, telling them what is and is not possible with digital outdoor.

When the creative work is good, digital screens can be visuallyarresting. "Advertisers have the opportunity to reflect what they aredoing on static posters, but in high-definition quality with movingimages," Steve Cox, the marketing director at Titan Outdoor, says.Titan, which was a digital pioneer with its Transvision network, isplanning to roll out 100 high-definition screens, about the size of theCBS Outdoor screens in Underground ticket halls, at London termini byOctober.

Streetbroadcast has the largest network of on-street digitalscreens, with 25 raised six-sheets in key shopping locations, andanother 40 installations planned by August. The high-definition screenshave run ads for clients such as the BBC with EastEnders and offerBluetooth connectivity and, unusually, have sound as well.

In the past, digital outdoor was often an after-thought - just as aposter was frequently a re-purposed press ad, a digital screen wasgenerally a piece of TV creative played without sound. Jon Lewen, thehead of sales for Alive, CBS Outdoor's digital arm, says this haschanged. The company now has 16 sets of digital escalator panels atTube stations such as Oxford Circus and Victoria, with PiccadillyCircus and London Bridge coming online in August. "In the past 12months, I've noticed a real step change in creative thinking aboutusing our screens on the Tube," Lewen says.

"It's gone from taking creative that was designed for another mediumand transferring it across, to thinking about the medium and coming upwith creative work specific to that experience." The key thing with thedigital escalator panels is that the screens rise at a certain angleand are linked, so copy can move from one to another.

Roadside, the digital proposition is different since the images arestatic to avoid distracting drivers. JCDecaux and Clear Channel haverecently launched networks of digital billboards in prime locationssuch as Tottenham Court Road and Waterloo Bridge. The technologymaximises the space for the media owner because it can rotate eightdifferent ads, rather than the maximum of three typical to a scrollingbillboard. In common with all digital outdoor, it also allows rapidcopy changes, opening up the possibility of displaying differentcreative by time of day or day of the week.

JCDecaux's digital billboard network launched in February and DavidMcEvoy, the marketing director, says advertisers are already playingwith this feature from a creative stand-point. For example, Lucozaderan a campaign with the strapline "crack on with the day" that changedto "power through the night" after dark. Advertisers have also usedJCDecaux's super-structure on the M4, the Torch, in this way, forexample running a countdown to the Harrods sale and displaying changingcreative for a "product of the day" for Waitrose. Day-parting is notyet available on Clear Channel's digital billboard network, which onlylaunched in April, but Cennydd Roberts, the national sales controllerfor Clear Channel, says this is in the pipeline.

MEDIA

Media planners love digital outdoor because it combines thetraditional strengths of outdoor as a broadcast medium with uniquetargeting opportunities. Day-part and week-part advertising is not justa chance for creative directors to come up with snazzy designs for dayand night, it's also a serious media planning opportunity. A campaigntargeting commuters can just run during the morning rush hour, while anentertainment brand can target evenings and weekends, and an alcoholbrand can simultaneously maximise its return on investment and meet itssocial responsibility by only advertising after a certain time of day.

For example, Magners has a year-long contract to advertise onPiccadilly Lite, Clear Channel's short-term LED digital screen atPiccadilly Circus, on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights only.Roberts says this screen, which is one of the few roadside sites withmoving images, was one of the first short-term outdoor opportunities inthe UK.

Traditional outdoor campaigns run for two weeks. This has evolvedpartly because media agencies have evidence that this is enough time tobuild solid exposure to a message within a target audience. However,the other reason is simply a matter of practicality - it is difficultfor media owners to sell small chunks of space and it is not feasibleto send armies of contractors out with rolls of paper and buckets ofpaste to change the copy every few days. Media agencies are chomping atthe bit for the greater flexibility offered by digital outdoor, so theindustry is likely to see more short-term, tactical ads as well.

Lewen says advertisers are seizing the opportunity to run short-termcampaigns and this is opening up new business opportunities for theindustry. "Recently, B&Q advertised on the Underground for thefirst time ever and we did a three-day campaign for them to promotetheir sale over a long weekend," Lewen says.

"Historically this would have been only on TV and press because youcouldn't run an outdoor campaign for three days." Camelot is anothershort-term advertiser that has run brief campaigns promoting theNational Lottery rollovers across several digital sites, including theTube network, Piccadilly Circus, and on JCDecaux's digital billboardnetwork.

Digital is transforming the face of airport ads as well. Theheadlines have focused on Heathrow Terminal 5, which, irrespective ofany problems with its baggage handling, offers state-of-the-art adopportunities with banks of 57-inch screens. In fact, JCDecaux has putup more than 400 digital screens around the country, including Glasgow,Gatwick, Stansted and Luton, and plans to install another 200. RivalEye Corp also has digital screens at its airports, including Manchester.

France says digital means that airport ads can be tactical as wellas strategic. "There is a perception that it's long term and verycorporate but it doesn't have to be," she says.

The company has AAR research showing how people's mindset changes asthey check in and progress through security, then relax with a spot ofshopping. France points out that an airport concourse is effectively ashopping mall, a fact American Express used in a recent campaign whereit ran different messages on screens outside different stores.

Similarly, both JCDecaux Airport and Eye Corp ran short-termcampaigns for MasterCard targeting Manchester United and Chelseafootball fans travelling to the Uefa Cup Final in Moscow.

On top of all this, digital outdoor still offers an abundance ofniche targeting opportunities, from I-Vu's network of hairdressingsalons to QJ Media's screens in gyms. Avanti Screenmedia has a networkof bars, a space that Clear Channel will shortly launch into with aforthcoming product it has dubbed Socialite.

Last year, the Outdoor Advertising Association forecast that thedigital outdoor advertising sector would be worth £187.8 million by2012, and account for 12 per cent of the total outdoor advertisingmarket. That would be a massive uplift from £47.5 million and 5 percent in 2007. Digital changes the rules of the game for both media andcreative and is bringing about a vastly different advertising landscapeto that of today. The industry has a long way to go, but the digitaljourney is now firmly under way.

THE KEY PLAYERS

CBS Outdoor

- 16 sets of digital escalator panels at key London Undergroundstations, with Victoria and Oxford Circus recent additions to thenetwork and Piccadilly Circus and London Bridge due in August. Roll-outto be 90 per cent complete by the end of summer 2008.

- 170 LCD screens in ticket halls so far, with 55 more due by the end of July.

- Cross-track projection launched at the end of June.

Titan Outdoor

- Planning to install 100 LCD screens at London termini by October.

- Piloting LED billboard at London Olympia.

Clear Channel

- Network of ten LED roadside billboards launched in April, with another ten due in the fourth quarter.

- Planned launch of Socialite, a network of portrait-shaped screens in bars.

JCDecaux

- Digital roll-out at BAA airports around the country, includingHeathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and Glagow, with 400 out of aplanned 600 screens so far.

- Network of 15 LED roadside billboards launched in February, with another five launching over the summer.

Eye Corp

- Has 29 digital screens at Manchester and East Midlands airports,including two new large-format digital sites at Manchester installed inMarch and May this year.

Streetbroadcast

- Network of 25 on-street LCD