Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
When DailyDOOH evolved from what was originally a weekly email news digest back in July 2007, we were always worried whether or not we would have enough daily news to report on.
One of our earliest ideas for feature articles was a monthly interview with a network executive. Within six months that soon became our regular CEO Spotlight feature.
I handled the first few but by April 2008 Gail Chiasson had joined us as our North American Editor and she has been in charge of them ever since (and yes, you can notice the difference in quality).
We have seen lots of ups and downs in the industry in the past five years but what surprises me most perhaps is just how many of the networks we covered are still in operation. You might think that a lot of the 43 networks featured, operating as Christian Vaglio-Giors says in his foreword, in a new, then revolutionary market would have shut up shop by now.
However, that is simply not so. Whilst companies such as Avanti Screenmedia, Prime Digital Media, SeeSaw Networks and Al Barq Digital went into administration, many others were acquired rather than folding completely.
Adcentricity died a death of a thousand cuts during 2011 and parts of 2012 but it was eventually acquired (and its brand kept) by Bee Media Inc., Librium TV was sold to BTG and whilst the Outdoor Broadcast Network (OBN) ceased operations during late 2010 and early 2011, it still managed to sell off its cross country network and affiliate stations – most of which were purchased by Pattison Outdoor Advertising Group and ADAPT Digital Billboard Network.
Other networks featured managed to create new business opportunities even whilst in their own death throes – Scala for example acquired SignChannel from Thinking Screen Media in 2010 before Thinking Screen Media inexplicably went out of business in 2011 almost exactly a year later and although Pixman Nomadic Media went into receivership in early 2010, their idea of ‘ScreenWalkers’ is still alive and well in the hands of a new business, NomadiX Media.
The long-awaited large scale corporate rationalisation of the industry shows no signs of showing up just yet, and meanwhile, as you can see in DOOH Insights, clever, driven entrepreneurs willing to take risks are still carving out niches in the marketplace.
If you haven’t already received one of the thousands of copies of DOOH Insights: 2008 to 2012 distributed at major events around the world you can purchase from Amazon here.
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