Autonomous Cars —the Grim Reaper of OOH, as the Internet was the Executioner of Newspaper

When Autonomous Vehicles are in,
Out of Home will be out -deux

by Brent Baer for OOH Today

Autonomous vehicles scare the hell out of me.  Not from a safety perspective.  I am sure they’ll be fool-proof before one is available to me. What frightens me, is the effect they will have on billboard readership.  When self driving cars are fully integrated into our society , looking out the windshield will be out.  I am guilty of loving our billboards.  My bias leads me to believe everyone is eagerly looking for the next OOH message when traveling.   They do not.  It is a concern. Most experts in OOH and the ones we should probably listen too more carefully, NOT in the Outdoor Advertising business, tell us autonomous cars are going to be a problem for us when fully functional. Let’s quite denying and start devising a strategy.

There are still too many ‘ influencers’ in Outdoor Advertising who are failing to recognize the adverse effects Automated Driving will have on OOH.  Reluctance to accept and join in a group ‘ground up re-think’, undermines and slows potential solutions to figure out how OOH stays relevant. We join in collaboration and cooperation, fully supporting OAAA leader and moral compass, Nancy Fletcher. Support Nancy’s call to take action and accelerate OOH growth through collaboration.

From my perspective this is a page from the historic collapse of newspapers.  It is a scenario reminiscent of newspaper’s failure to embrace the world-wide web and the internet. It is that  serious.

Autonomous vehicles are a real and serious threat to OOH as it stands today. 
See our post from last week ⇒ Weatherman For Outdoor Advertising ———⇒

One of Out of Home’s top minds, with solid OOH Experience, a person who earned his way to expertise paying his dues, Managing Partner at Billups,  Rick Robinson, shares it this way:

Thank you “Mr. Weatherman” for bringing this forward.

It’s high time we began to chop wood through this challenge. We have a seemingly enormous advantage with hundreds of thousands of real estate adjacencies. The rub being it was curated over decades upon the fundamental assumption that people in cars always look front forward out the windshield. No what? I’m not so sure we are hiding in the sand so much as scratching our collective heads…

dive in, invest, begin failing forward, learn and ultimately lead the conversation. We’re a resilient bunch. It’s in us to figure this one out too.

As Rick Robinson says, we need to “re-think, invest, fail forward, lean and lead…” in OOH. OOH has solved these kinds of problems before and we will again.

Those who do not accept the warning signals ‘autonomous’ presents as a threat to OOH, will find themselves realizing the same fatal consequences in the erosion of market value of  OOH just as it has in newspapers. Prints’ failure to recognize and act on the emergence of the world-wide web has left them gutted.

Newspaper is paying dearly for their over-confident, short-sighted failure of their leadership to act. Newspaper did not believe the Internet was going to effect them, pridefully acting as they were bullet proof.  It’s not about being right. It’s about being.

Join in collaboration and cooperation, supporting OAAA leader and moral compass, Nancy Fletcher.
Support Nancy’s call to take action and accelerate OOH growth through collaboration.

We are delighted to hear Rick Robinson is “diving in, investing, failing forward, learning and leading the conversation.”

As a small OOH owner/operator the last 18 years, I sleep better tonight knowing Rick Robinson, Nancy Fletcher and William Board are leading the charge. Hope you do too.

Here is more on OOH and Autonomous Vehicles by way of OAAA and Venables, LLC —    THE FUTURE OF OUT OF HOME ADVERTISING IN A SELF-DRIVING AMERICA