Growth, Advancement & Reflection: Part 2 – Looking Ahead

With the year behind us, knowing what you know now, what is one piece of advice you would give to your 2021 self?

Looking Ahead: The Future of Advertising in 2022 and Beyond

Looking at last year’s responses, the key themes were around, adapting, preparing for the unexpected and maintaining relationships. However, this year’s answers took a different view: 

“Continue to be proud to work in such a resilient and creative media channel,” said Jamie Finn. “It’s no secret that OOH was one of the hardest hit mediums during the pandemic – but it’s recovery and the fantastic quality of work that we are seeing shows how much brands value using OOH and I’m excited about how this can be further built on in 2022.” 

For Tom Perrett, “Being patient, but preparing to be adaptable. The audiences will return, and we have the data to be able to analyse and advise how this will happen across multiple markets. Too many times there has been false dawns, particularly over the recovery of international travel. Change and learning never stops and OOH has proven now more than ever how much of a flexible and adaptable medium it is.” 

Adding a data and insight perspective, Emily Alcorn, said, “Be prepared to do a lot of campaign effectiveness studies! Measurement will become more important than ever, even though budgets may be scrutinised to a greater degree, the need for clear evidence is at the top of all agendas. Demand for brand impact studies measuring the impact of OOH exposure on key branding metrics such as awareness, perception and consideration increased 2-fold vs 2020 and rose by 55% vs 2019 (Talon brand impact studies Jan-Oct2021).”

And finally, what would do you expect OOH & the wider media landscape to look like in 2022? 

Amy has three points to add, the first being, “I believe that the demand for bespoke OOH creative solutions will continue to grow exponentially with greater emphasis on delivering results.” In her second point, Amy adds, “Across the media landscape and OOH in particular, transparency and verification of campaign delivery will be at the forefront of client expectations which as an industry we need to work together better.” And finally on the topic of clients, Amy also suggests, “More clients will be using more digital and data for smarter targeting of out of home audiences.” 

James believes that “2022 will continue to build on a strong Q3 & Q4 ’21 and return to pre-pandemic revenues. Ada & Atlas will drive smarter execution for our clients and attract incremental revenue from digital spenders. We will continue to focus on improving our ability to measure client outcomes. OOH will play an important role in delivering young upmarket audiences to support TV schedules and provide the broadcast reach and delivery to complement online activity. Sustainability and ESG will be at the top of the agenda for clients and OOH has a big opportunity to be well placed in this arena.” 

Speaking from a TV & OOH perspective, Helen adds, “As advertisers continue to return to OOH, and at the same time factors affecting other media channels come into play (such as advertisers readying themselves for new HFSS legislation on TV) we expect to continue to see demand outstripping supply across the most sought-after broadcast OOH formats. The result of this will be a movement towards long term investment strategies from the most media savvy clients, and we expect to see OOH leading the charge as a broadcast media channel in 2022 & 2023.  

With technology and creativity at the forefront of Dan’s mind, he adds, “There has been much laudable technology and automation technique hitting the OOH space over the last few years. What the pandemic facilitated, due to the unexpected downtime, was a chance to take stock, rethink methodologies and technologies that aid the creative delivery of campaign creatively.”  

Our latest tools and techniques are ready to roll into the automated and programmatic OOH landscape that we find ourselves in, allowing creative to keep up with the ever-shifting sands of the OOH media landscape and helping ads and content be more responsive and appropriate for active audiences than ever before. Having creative tools that complement the wider Talon stack of technology stands our group in the perfect place to continue to lead the market.” 

Here’s to a successful 2022.