Out of Home in 2025

Challenged to tell the story of OOH in 2025 on a poster it would read ‘Digital innovation meets Ethical Advertising Standards’.

The rapid pace of OOH’s transformative changes, driven by DOOH investment, creative technology, programmatic solutions, AI data-driven insights and sustainability initiatives are giving advertisers good reason to re-evaluate the OOH landscape, its capabilities and value in the coming year.

And as consumers grapple with another year of global unrest, cost of living and decreasing institutional trust; we know OOH’s familiar physical presence, flexibility and trusted public canvas will offer increased value for brands to connect with audiences.

In our view, there are three overarching trends in OOH that brands can use to their advantage this year:

1.  DOOH Comes of Age

DOOH will come of age through sheer scale and impact combined with technology, while earning its seat at the retail media table as an effective performance channel for integrated marketing strategies.

DOOH will prosper

As media continues to fragment, and consumer journeys become increasingly non-linear and omnichannel, DOOH will prosper. Reaching over 80% of the UK population, DOOH’s scale, impact and agility to engage consumers more effectively, and its obvious synergy with mobile, will help brands to ‘cut-through’ the noise and influence behaviour both offline and online. We’ll also see an increase in programmatic DOOH and further integration with other channels through omnichannel marketing strategies that optimise reach and engagement.

The last mile: growth in retail media

Consumers now leverage multiple channels to purchase goods and services and convenience sits alongside cost in driving shopping habits. To gain share of mind at the point of purchase brands increasingly rely on shouting loudest in the ‘last mile.’ Retail marketing covers a myriad of online and offline channels to connect with customers, providing a rich view of purchase behaviour, and sitting at the heart of these much shorter, more seamless and increasingly non-linear consumer journeys is mobile.

DOOH’s scale and immediacy, now extending in-store at major supermarkets and social venues, provides a high-impact opportunity to target buying audiences and category entry points on path-to-purchase and point of sale, driving action instore or online. In 2025 we’ll see digital and retail marketing strategies integrate DOOH as an effective performance channel and ‘retail media’.

2.  Innovation and Responsibility will become familiar OOH bedfellows

With the AI revolution well underway, our ability to understand and predict consumer behaviour will continue to become more sophisticated and agile.  

From AI to Actual Impact

Innovations in AI are progressing rapidly, empowering us to optimise planning, trading, message delivery and creative content in a more intuitive way using an even greater range of triggers and engineered prompts. Over the coming years, the integration of synthetic data will be transformative to OOH audience measurement, enabling us to create a deeper and even more accurate analysis of mobility, offering a truer representation of audiences based on behavioural patterns in a scalable, GDPR compliant way.

A Quest for Quality

Compared to the potential risk for brands of ad fraud, inappropriate content and algorithmic misplacement online, stocks continue to rise for the brand safety afforded by OOH’s public, trusted platform.

The winning trifecta of OOH’s 'quality guaranteed’ formats, positive social impact and industry sustainability initiatives, makes the medium a highly visible, flexible, safe and responsible space to play that will see it retain existing and attract a longer tail of new brands.

With the ban on Junk Food TV ads airing before the 9pm watershed coming into force in October, we predict a significant effect on the demand in OOH, as advertisers learn from those that have already navigated restrictions, and test a responsible environment already geared for HFSS.

3. Next Gen Brand Building will be an imperative for brands in OOH

With savvy audiences increasingly seeking out experiences that deliver a fair exchange for their attention and time, brands will use digital innovation, data and technology to find new, creative ways outdoors to connect.

Connecting to Culture

All brands crave fame. It’s the ambition of any CMO for their brand to become famous. But in an advertising environment where the algorithm is quickly becoming king lasting fame is difficult.  It’s no surprise that creative effectiveness and let’s just say it, ‘creativity’, has taken a hit over the last 15 years or so.

Which is why in 2025 it’s back on the agenda. Big, bold ideas, which capture the zeitgeist and get people talking. OOH is well placed to deliver this. It is an unmissable part of the landscape that surrounds us, and as it evolves to deliver more interactivity, it is time for the creative community to explore its potential.

Gen Z IRL

For a generation born digital we are increasingly seeing them taking time to pursue real life experiences. Moments of authenticity and human connections lived in parallel with their social, digital world. 

Our own research (Digital Natives in the physical world) showed that this generation are more inclined to shop for and entertain themselves in physical settings. More so than even their grandparents.

In 2025, we expect to see more brands deploying OOH solutions that stimulate gen z’s senses, fulfilling their rising need to be in control. We’ll see new screen technologies that allow the user to control things with their hands alone. Removing the friction of a mobile device.

We’ll see greater use of QR codes and social user generated content that pulls through to dynamic real time DOOH, whilst also finding more innovative ways to incorporate feedback and make audiences feel connected and valued. Allowing brands greater opportunity to meet gen z IRL.

But as the French poet Anatole France once said, ‘To know is nothing at all. To imagine is everything.” In 2025, it’s what we don’t yet know in OOH that is the most exciting aspect for brands.