Outdoor Advertising on Trend: Paving the Way for Mobile Commerce

Almost half of smartphone owners now using their mobile devices to “showroom”; browse and read reviews, 39% checking competitor prices and 29% purchasing out of stock items directly from their device, according to the latest eCSI study from IMRG and eDigitalResearch. It seems fair to say that “showrooming” is a trend that is here to stay and that consumers want to and expect to be able to use their mobile when out shopping. This trend is one of the many variations of the much wider phenomenon that is e-commerce. IDATE estimates that e-commerce is a 1,145 billion EUR market generating 34.8 billion transactions in 2014. But it doesn’t stop here. As a result of globalisation and increased mobility, consumers’ growing addiction for e-commerce is now also evolving towards m-commerce. This fast growing trend has generated 115 billion EUR in revenues, through 29 billion transactions. But what is even more interesting to see is that this figure includes about 13% of alternative payment systems, i.e. other than payment cards. Thanks to technologies such as Near Field Communication (NFC) or Quick Response (QR), mobile phones are increasingly allowing us to pay directly using our devices rather than with a payment card. And it shows. Telecom operator EE introduced Cash on Tap, the mobile phone contactless payment service app in the summer of 2013. Overall, the volume of NFC transactions is estimated to increase from 4.6 billion EUR in 2014 to 53.8 billion in 2018 (source: IDATE) and the volume of scans, through QR for instance, has increased by 20% since Q1 2013 (source: ScanLife). More and more each day, people are relying on mobile devices to save time and money. And it's great to see many advertisers coming up with inventive ways to facilitate direct mobile payment. Out-of-home is no exception to this trend and it is a great medium that allows mobile technologies to reach their potential and create added value for an advertising campaign. As Posterscope’s latest research in conjunction with EE shows, advertising is 200% more effective when mobile data is used to plan campaigns, making mobile data one of the OOH industry’s biggest game-changers in a decade. With outdoor advertising, the possibilities are endless. And as NFC, QR and other smartphone technologies make their ways into our daily habits, brands are ever more able to take advantage of the time spent out of home to reach out and connect with their consumer.