Singapore – Outdoor Media Association (OMA), the peak industry body which represents Australia’s outdoor media display companies, have announced its new members, which includes shopping centre company Scentre Group, independent programmatic digital out-of-home (DOOH) adtech Hivestack, and health and wellbeing media network Tonic Media Network.

OMA also announced that Scentre Group and Tonic Media Network have joined as members of the industry’s audience measurement system, LOVE (measurement of outdoor visibility and exposure).

Scentre Group owns and operates a portfolio of 42 Westfield Living Centres across, which are some of the most frequented destinations in the region. Its in-house marketing solutions business, BrandSpace, connects brands and businesses to the Westfield audience through a portfolio of connected digital and physical touchpoints. Meanwhile, Hivestack specialises in the buy and sell-side of programmatic DOOH advertising. 

Lastly, rejoining OMA and LOVE, Tonic Media Network offers a health channel that reaches over 16 million Australians in GP waiting rooms and pharmacies each month.

Scott Moore, Scentre Group’s general manager for BrandSpace, noted that the membership signifies their support for the industry’s commitment to make it easier to plan and buy out-of-home media, through innovations in audience measurement and standardisation. 

“The enhancements to LOVE in measuring audiences in retail environments and on digital out-of-home assets will better enable us to help brands, retail partners, marketers and their agencies unlock the power of marketing within the Westfield environment,” said Moore.

Meanwhile, Watt Bushby, Hivestack’s managing director for ANZ and SEA, believes that the solutions OMA is building in areas like digital audience measurement and standardisation will provide the transparency and accuracy needed to take our industry to the next stage. 

“There is a big opportunity for marketers to harness the power of contextual targeting in programmatic DOOH and deliver even more effective campaigns. Innovations like LOVE 2.0 will go a long way in enabling that,” said Bushby.

Richard Silverton, Tonic Media Network’s CEO and managing director, said, “We’ve been watching the development of the LOVE 2.0 build and we’re really excited about all that the platform will offer. It is critical that our customers are confident that they are reaching the right people with the right message at the right time.”

In early November, OMA has revealed a raft of initiatives set to launch on 31 January at its first OUT-FRONT event. The rollout will include the interim audience measurement update LOVE 1.5, which will measure digital screens and provide a new metric based on neuroscience called the Neuro Impact Factor. In addition, standardisation guidelines will be introduced that will see the industry unite on common terminology, screen ratios, insertion orders, and shift to selling OOH by Share of Time. The industry also announced plans to move towards carbon-neutrality in 2022 by building a tool that gives advertisers the option to offset their OOH campaigns.

Charmaine Moldrich, OMA’s CEO, shared that the renaissance of outdoor advertising is showing no signs of waning, and this is further reinvigorating membership to the industry body.

“A lot of the work we do as an industry body is focused on our responsibility as a provider of advertising in the public space, of which sustainability is a vital part. Our aim is pledging to go carbon neutral as an industry is to set ourselves on that path of reducing emissions and waste, and to also be seen as a sustainable advertising channel doing our part,” said Moldrich.