Leadership Shifts, Programmatic Perspectives, and SOMO’s NYC Launch —Colorful Commentary
Gunderman, Thompson, Oshry and SOMO
Leadership changes at the OAAA, yet another perspective on programmatic’s influence, and a Latin American company is taking over taxi tops in NYC. A weekly recap of the top OOH stories you may have missed and colorful commentary from BB for the week ending September 14, 2024.
1. Julie Thompson Departs, OAAA Announces New Sr VP Marketing and Communications Role
Julie Thompson is moving into a new strategic advisory role with the organization and returning to her roots as an independent industry consultant. In conjunction with the news, Olivia Oshry, who currently serves as Vice President of Marketing, is being promoted to Senior Vice President, Marketing and Communications. She will be joining OAAA’s Executive Team effective October 1, 2024.
Moving forward, Thompson will help grow the organization’s relationships with most senior brand marketers and agency executives. She will also work on other special projects and industry activations. Her critical contributions to the organization include building out our marketing capability and attracting world-class talent to the team. Oshry will take full responsibility for OAAA’s core marketing strategy, team, experiences, and goals.
B.B.’s Take: I am happy to see Olivia Oshry move up in the OAAA organization. She’s a quality individual who has demonstrated promise and results in her former capacity at the organization. I congratulate and wish her well.
It is very disappointing to see another Chief Marketing Officer turn over at the OAAA. It was just a little over a year ago when Thompson was announced as the latest CMO⇒ OAAA Appoints Ad Industry Champion Julie Thompson as EVP & CMO. Julie Thompson may have been the best hire and right fit as CMO in Anna Bager’s tenure. When an organization has the right talent, there must be a solution to keep that individual.
2. Jeff Gunderman responds to Robert Macmillan’s article: Programmatic As A Growth Driver – Fact Or Fiction?
Jeff Gunderman agrees with Robert Macmillan‘s view on the strength of local advertising and OOH’s current limited growth through programmatic growth. But he challenges Macmillan’s reliance on historical performance. He suggests that future potential is where programmatic shines, addressing inefficiencies in OOH, such as fragmentation and manual processes. In 2023, $450 million of OOH media was transacted programmatically in the U.S., representing 15% of digital OOH revenue. This number is expected to grow in 2024. While programmatic hasn’t yet made a significant impact, Gunderman argues that its adoption is still in the early stages and has the potential to drive growth as it matures, similar to the broader digital media landscape where over 90% of digital display ad spend is programmatic.
B.B.’s Take: I appreciate Jeff Gunderman’s ‘alternative perspective’ submitted as an editorial to OOH Today. We encourage thought leadership and all view points shared via our Industry leading OOH newsletter, that OOH Today has become. However, a number of issues still remain unresolved based on his comments when it comes to programmatic.
First, it has been at least 7 years that programmatic has been is existence and the progress, it is argued the success of the growth in revenues, isn’t there. As Gunderman argues, it’s not there “yet”. If not now, when will revenues be large enough to see meaningful growth? If programmatic is that panacea to OOH’s success, in light of the last 7 years, why hasn’t it impacted revenues significantly? Overall, OOH revenues still languish in less than 4% growth.
Secondly, Gunderman’s final point of, ‘technology transformation’ is good for the Industry. Just because it is ‘technology’ does not necessarily translate to good for the OOH Industry or any Industry. There is a significant amount of failed tech across all industries, OOH included, but just because it’s ‘technology’ does not mean it should be embraced.
Third issue regarding Gunderman’s comments, aims to the viewpoint to discounting the importance of ‘historical performance’. Historical performance is critical in evaluating results and effectiveness. How long does the Industry invest, some might say ‘bet’, on programmatic before the shortfalls and wasted resources of over-allocation hinder the ability to adapt and effectively direct those resources to other more performance enhancing opportunities? Programmatic may indeed have a future in OOH, but it is not the Holy Grail those who are heavily invested in and make their living from the platform, claim it will be.
3. GPOVallas Rolls into the U.S. with SOMO, NYC’s Largest Car Top Ad Network, led by Jamie Lowe
B.B.’s Take: This is a tall order GPO Vallas / SOMO is taking on with a long-standing platform, digital taxi tops. Digital car tops or taxi tops is an OOH space that has been around a long time and has seen many companies struggle to succeed. We wish them well.
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Counterpoint to Jeff Gunderman’s counterpoint to Robert Macmillan.
Yes – we need more automation in OOH & DOOH but that shouldn’t mean the tech platforms own the media trading and extract fees from the media spend, unless the value added is greater than the value extracted.
And – as for data, surely the data is not unique to pDOOH and any additional data services in OOH/DOOH planning, buying and campaign tracking are choices the brands can make and pay for in a transparent way, when required.
Technology is being adopted, data is improving and more can be done to accelerate this but let us not bundle everything into programmatic believing it is better than the medium itself.
My opinion is that we are misleading brands into committing smaller budgets, spread across only those assets accessible to programmatic platforms, with the belief that it is a more effective use of the media budget.
pDOOH has a role to play and can be targeted and can enhance campaigns or fulfil specific media strategies, but it is not a replacement for OOH and DOOH.
Well reasoned and superior points @RonGraham. We appreciate the comments! thank you