OOH Uncut Podcast: Dylan Mabin
Dylan Mabin, President, Geopath, joins host Rick Robinson, CEO, PJX Media, on OOH Uncut, the podcast featuring thought leaders in the Out of Home media world.
October 2, 2023
To grow the out-of-home industry beyond its current 5% market share, it's essential to embrace change, invest in stronger data, and target new audiences with different budgets, challenging sacred assumptions along the way.
Achieving alignment and consistency across all formats within the out-of-home industry is crucial to compete effectively with other media formats; fragmentation within the industry will hinder its growth potential.
Dylan Mabin Discussion on OOH Uncut Podcast with Rick Robinson
Rick Robinson: Hello everybody, Rick Robinson here with PJX Media. We've got an awesome guest today. I'm very excited about this. Dylan Mabin, President of GEOPATH and as you all know, Geopath is the governing body of audience measurement for the out of home industry. Welcome Dylan!
Dylan Mabin: Thank you, Rick. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
Rick Robinson: Absolutely and you are kicking off season 2 of Out of Home Uncut. Season one, we asked everybody. What can out of home do that no other medium can do and the responses were super positive very much about the public presence and the gravitas of the medium, the concurrent viewing one to many experience of the medium, how we make a statement out in the people’s space. So that's been confirmed. So now the question is, If all of that, good stuff is happening and we measure ourselves better - Why are we seemingly stalled out at 5% market share?
Dylan Mabin: A really good question. Yeah, I mean as long as I've been in the industry for about 15 years, it's always been around that four or five percent in the US. You hear stories and other countries are about it being 20%, Others lower. I've been thinking a lot about this if we're going through our own strategic transformation to try to figure out what Geopath can do on behalf of the industry to make sure that we can grow.
I think at it's core is we can't expect to change if we keep everything the same, It's silly to think that we're going to grow without making some big changes. To me, what I see to make that big changes to get in front of people that have not considered because we're not going to necessarily give more money out of our existing clients, it's around finding that new clients that have not considered out of Have a misunderstanding of what out of home is capable of doing and we can do so much more than from a measurement perspective. Then we could 15 years ago, there's amazing capabilities, around doing campaign, performance measurement, and the term measurement has evolved over time as brands are more focused on outcomes.
They want to make sure that not did it work but why it worked and to learn from that. So, understanding the success of the campaign is almost as important as understanding the quantitative audience measurement that we provide to the industry. So, I think to get past that five percent there needs to be much more presence at this strategic planning stages at the agencies in the marketing level. To show what out of home can contribute. And one of the challenges that we've seen over the years is just having the data that's compatible with those tools that those planners use. So for every incremental dollar that I put into a plan, should it go into online streaming? Television.
Dylan Mabin: Or out of home. And we now have the level of data to really understand how out of home builds reach and frequency across different audiences, across different markets at the national level, and the local level. And I think that that's a huge hurdle that we are now getting past The pandemic. Really served as a catalyst. To kind of honestly, spook people. And to realizing they need more details on the answers. So that comes from having better data and better measurement.
Rick Robinson: So, stronger data, the ability to speak about reach and frequency on like a national medium. Getting that information in front of new audiences with new budgets, new buckets of money preaching to the choir will only get us so far, but I think, what? Really nails it here and you said it first was willingness to change. And that's to get uncomfortable. And to let go of some. Perhaps.
Dylan Mabin: Right. Right.
Rick Robinson: Sacred assumptions. and, are we ready for that kind of discomfort.
Dylan Mabin: No, I think that's one of the scary things because change is scary and it's going to require managing change investment to build infrastructure. But also to manage your business practices and change your business practices and change the skill sets that your employees have. That's a lot that's monumental task and each company is going to have their own way of doing that, but the other thing that I think really needs to happen for out of home to get beyond that. Five percent is to align, we cannot be fractured, we cannot be one percent media formats and compete with the other 95%. It's never going to happen. So until out of home provides some level of consistency and connection across all formats about of home, be it traditional large format street, furniture transit, place based experiential, you name it. We have people calling us that have drones that want to be measured and they consider themselves out of home. So, Until we have that alignment and consistency and it's going to be really really hard because that fragmentation is going to continue to a fight against us.
Rick Robinson: Would you call this a moment of A Check moment for us of, do we have the courage to do this? Because there's no guarantee
Dylan Mabin: No, there's no guarantee and I think that there's always a conversation around the opportunity for growth that I think, at the same time, we need to think about securing our existing revenue. we want to make sure that we get both.
Rick Robinson: Okay.
Dylan Mabin: You can't change and tell someone that will know. We don't necessarily do it that way anymore. You just need to be more flexible. And that is challenging, going back to how audience measurement and out of homes been done for decades, our organizations been around for almost 90 years, it's always been an annualized number. It's an average daily number for that year. It doesn't change throughout the entire conversation from planning to execution to host campaign analysis. And I think that that's the other challenge that people are going to be facing is it is so much information. And the only way for us to make sense of it and learn from it, and take action from it is to build systems.
Dylan Mabin: To process this vast amount of data. And that's new and it's a little bit scary, but if we don't do that, we're going to be, I think left in the dust. And I think we should be worried about our own five percent, rather than trying to grow. So if we want to continue to keep our 5% and grow, we need to make that change.
Rick Robinson: Alright, you heard it here, willingness to invest in new systems. Adopt a new policies alignment. And really a dose of taking a leap, that's what it's going to take for us to go beyond the 5% that we're stalled out at right now. Dylan, thank you very much for your time and input will definitely have you back.
Dylan Mabin: Thank you, Rick. It's a great question.
Rick Robinson: I'm sure this is going to be a very exciting topic for season two Out of Homecut. Take care of yourself.
Dylan Mabin: I can't wait to hear all the different answers.
Rick Robinson: You and me both take care.
Dylan Mabin: Thank you.
