OAAA safety seminar registration is open, considering landscaping in your OOH budget, OOH salary forecast for 2025, and why brand safety is more important than ever in OOH. A weekly recap of the top OOH stories you may have missed and colorful commentary from BB for the week ending August 17, 2024.
1. OAAA’s 2024 Safety Seminar Set for October 1-2
Registration for OAAA’s 2024 Safety Seminar, presented in partnership with Formetco, is open. The event will be on October 1-2, 2024, in Duluth, Georgia, at Formetco’s Corporate Facility.
This seminar will give attendees crucial insights into the latest safety protocols, industry standards, and compliance requirements. There will also be the opportunity to network, share best practices, and hear from industry experts.
B.B.’s Take: In my 37 years of managing an OOH plant, I am fortunate to say I have never had anyone of my crew seriously hurt or killed on the job while installing or building billboards. I have had close friends who managed other markets who have fatalities and in two instances their employees who died of very preventable accidents, I knew as well. It’s a sad event attending those funerals. Young men lost before their time. TAKE SAFTEY SERIOUSLY!
2. Why You Should Invest in Your Out-of-Home Plants
B.B.’s Take: “If the client sees it first, it’s not a good look for anyone in the industry,” … Mike Goodrich, love the article and the thought, but you are missing the most important point. First, my head froze for a second when I read that you said it’s not a good look. No frickin shinola it’s not a good look! The most important point to this story and similar ones I have been advocating for over 45 years of my career, the quintessential thought is not if the client sees it first; it is if an advertiser/brand/client who sees it and dismisses OOH completely. The advertiser does NOT allow OOH in the consideration set and will not buy OOH under any circumstance. The image in their mind of the billboard blocked by vegetation. They immediately and summarily eliminate OOH media in any format as a potential for their product/ service. And as a salesman or an Industry, one has no idea why they are shutting you and the Industry out, not even getting in the door. It’s the worst complaint any business might encounter–the one they never hear. Vegetation is such an easy fix.
3. Salary Increase Projections in OOH for 2025
B.B.’s Take: This writing by Janea S. McDonald is great reading for both employers and employees. Read it. Learn. Grow. Increase you’re salary
4. GARM Folds —OOH Must Become The Most Brand Safe Channel
The Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) folded after a Musk-led lawsuit that accused the organization of trying to coordinate a boycott against X and other publishers.
GARM was originally a cross-industry initiative designed to increase brand safety, giving advertisers greater transparency about where and how their brands appeared in online advertising. But, it could not take the financial strain of the court case. This downfall of an online brand safety watchdog is disheartening. Its dissolution is a step backward in the fight to make online advertising more transparent and accountable.
OOH must lean into the brand safety conversation and present advertisers to a better alternative than online. This will allow OOH to claim its rightful position as the most brand-safe channel for advertisers to invest in. OOH offers a controlled, predictable environment that allows brands to know where their ads will be displayed, and there should be zero risk of association with harmful content. But, the industry needs to offer advertisers a truly transparent delivery experience. This includes the implementation of fully independent third-party verification at scale now.
B.B.’s Take: There is so much to unpack here with considerably more to the story than this writing offers. Can someone say OOH tax? More later.