Advertising campaigns are everywhere we go.
On TV, radio & social media, you can’t do anything or go anywhere without being subjected to an advertisement of some sort. Even though the advertising market could seem a little saturated from the outside looking in, there is one segment which is enjoying precedented growth, Out of Home.
The public are now spending more time outdoors than ever before which means that a whopping 98% of the UK population are exposed to OOH per week, with the average UK adults spending over 3 hours per day outdoors. With an already strong growth year on year within OOH, GroupM predicts that Outdoor Advertising will surpass spending on both newspapers and magazines by 2024, expanding at a yearly rate of between 2.5% and 4%.
As we enter into a new decade and a new age of Outdoor Advertising, this seems like the perfect time to explore the history of OOH, from its primitive beginnings, discovering how the medium developed, and finally to taking a glimpse into the future and what we should expect to see from OOH advertising in the coming years.
The OOH Timeline
- As early as the 15th century, Flyposting was widely practised in Europe. This was the first primitive signs of Outdoor Advertising with signs advertising mainly services on offer and placed on fences and sides of buildings.
- By the 17th century the Lithograph was invented which introduced a new method of creating posters. Due to this, posters greatly increased in popularity and so started to be placed in locations in which pedestrian traffic was high.
- 1867 was the year in which the earliest known billboard rental was available in America which was shortly followed by the world’s first 24-sheet billboard, displayed at the Paris Esposition. With the advent of the 24-sheet, this lead to poster art schools being established in England, Austria and Germany.
- With the arrival of motoring in the 1920’s, the location focus of Outdoor Advertising switched from buildings to roadside and so over time more and more big brands such as Coca Cola and Kelloggs started to advertise nationwide to a new and mobile audience.
