News broke today that CBS Outdoor is acquiring outdoor advertising businesses, including over 1,100 billboards in 11 major domestic markets, from Van Wagner Communications for $690 million. As the former CBS Corp. unit continues to broaden its reach, the fairly fractured OOH advertising market remains a dynamic place, with JCDecaux, Clear Channel Outdoor and Lamar Advertising all rivaling CBS Outdoor for the eyeballs.
While OOH advertising, especially the billboards, has been notoriously difficult to measure, a lot of exciting new technology has emerged in this regard to help quantify and maximize its efforts (many featured in our Virtual Lab). Clear Channel, for one, has been reportedly experimenting with location-based interactive outdoor platform. In this digital age, regardless of the amount of good ol’ billboards one might own, all marketers should be looking into the new out-of-home technology, especially the mobile ones, to really drive the message home.
