A Roy Morgan survey of commuters in the country’s five biggest cities found strong engagement with outdoor advertising, fuelling the industry’s meteoric rise in recent years.
Australians spot hundreds of outdoor ads on their way to and from work every week no matter what mode of transport they are using, new research finds.
Brisbane was overall the best performer with easily the highest engagement levels across two of the three types of advertising and equal on another, despite being a much smaller city.
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Public transport had the biggest engagement, with about 70 per cent of commuters in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane saying they had noticed an ad in the past week, with Adelaide not far behind on 65 per cent.
Roy Morgan media general manager Tim Martin says out-of-home media is a natural fit for communicating with commuters.
“It is noteworthy that despite the prevalence of an eyes-on-the-phone approach to travelling, public transport advertising continues to reach a large number of CBD workers,” he says.
“That said, we see major opportunities for smart phone advertising to work closely with digital out of home formats, beacons, face, eyeball, image recognition and proximity-based ad targeting services.”
Roadside advertising was understandably less noticed, but by far more drivers in gridlock-riddled big cities like Brisbane (42 per cent), Melbourne (36.7 per cent), and Sydney (30 per cent) than those thats traffic flows smoother, such as Perth and Adelaide which were far behind at about 15 per cent.
The engagement didn’t stop when commuters got to work either, with more people noticing screens in lifts, foyers, and offices including reception areas, than on the road.
Brisbane topped this category with 41.4 per cent, followed by Melbourne at 36.6, Sydney 32.5, Perth 26.8, and Adelaide 21.2.
Roy Morgan says almost one in eight employed Australians work in a capital city CBD, with an average home-to-work distance of around 18km, giving them plenty of opportunity to notice the increasing number of outdoor ads.
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