JCDecaux to invest £20m in digital roadside billboards
JCDecaux plans to invest £20 million into its outdoor sites, which will create the largest network of roadside digital billboards in the UK.
The media owner’s 20 x 48-sheet Primetime billboards will be unveiled from next Spring, located in high-profile, central London locations.
The network of digital billboards follows Decaux’s digitisation of the M4 Torch earlier this year. The Primetime billboards will use the same LED technology which is being implanted across all Decaux’s national billboard campaigns.
One of the main advantages of digital billboards is the ability for advertisers to take advantage of topicality and day-part messaging.
Spencer Berwin, managing director of sales at JCDecaux, said: “This is a hugely exciting move, bringing the flexibility and immediacy offered by digital to our roadside billboard portfolio.
“This brings the critical mass of digital screens to the roadside sector and crucially provides digital opportunities to all our advertisers as part of their national 48-sheet campaigns. It’s digital for all, rather than digital for the few.”
Earlier this week, advertising expenditure forecasts from ZenithOptimedia highlighted outdoor as the second biggest growth medium in the world, after the internet.
By the end of 2008, outdoor, fuelled by investment in digital, is set to increase its market share from 5.6 per cent to 5.9 per cent.
In contrast, newspapers’ share of world ad spend is tipped to fall from 29 per cent in 2006 to 26.2 per cent in 2009, cinema is expected to remain static at 0.4 per cent., magazines’ are expected to fall 0.3 points to 12.2 per cent and radio is forecast to drop 0.2 points to 7.9 per cent.
Last week, Decaux announced plans to end its paper and paste billboards in the UK by replacing all 10,000 sites with a high-quality, environmentally-friendly one-piece poster.
The ambitious media company hailed the move as, “the most significant change to the advertising industry since posters began”.
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