Betty Jabbour, Commercial Director of Le Reseau, one of Lebanon’s leading Unipole network offering the biggest market share in the country with a wide selection of large outdoor advertising options, discusses with ArabAd her predictions of the business in the months ahead.
The State of OOH
Out of home advertising is still the healthiest media. Whether we’re talking road signs (unipoles/rooftops) or BTL trucks, all make such a powerful impact due to traffic jams, especially on main highways. At the beginning of the year, Q1 revenues were a bit slow but improved remarkably during the municipal elections period as OOH is the fastest media to spread political messages. During that time, the demand for trucks is exceptionally high as the client gets to reach his end consumer directly by routing these vehicles in specific areas of choice.
The Challenges
The decrease in spending on OOH is not due to its fall in popularity, rather from the bad economic situation in the country and region, which has seen advertising spend decreasing. In addition, the first two months of the year are usually slow as budgets are still not set.
Elections Period
OOH media is the most efficient channel for elections as electoral messages are spread directly and efficiently bearing in mind that the election period is short and hence clients need prompt feedback. The problems that consumers might face during this period is the chaotic behaviour of the municipalities that can spin out of control in some places driving advertisers to compensate in order to keep the balance between the running candidates.
Reach vs. Impact
Unlike what advertisers say, OOH media is the cheapest of all advertising channels. The reason behind this is the fact that population is growing nowadays thereby increasing the number of road vehicles, which in turn causes more traffic jams. However, we can fairly assume that the CPM (cost per thousand) reached by the outdoor is still the cheapest in Lebanon. Therefore, digital channels will not influence the budgets allocated for OOH or any other media as every media gets its share of the market in a different way.
