Consumers Spend More Time Outdoors than Ever Before

The general public spends a far greater percentage of its time outdoors than any other previous generations, causing marketers to chase after them using public media, Mediapost writes. Only 8 percent of a person’s time was spent neither at home nor at work in 1960; now that number has grown to 18 percent today. So-called “public media” in the past was mainly outdoor billboards and terrestrial radio, but new ways to reach consumers are popping up constantly.

“Every day it seems like there is a new opportunity to talk to our consumers in a place that we didn’t think of talking to them before,” said Norm Chait, vice president/director of out-of-home at MediaVest, which includes a new network of digital screens placed in front of customers at hair and nail salons. “It used to be just emery boards. Now you have a captive audience sitting in front of a screen for a half an hour at a time.”

Now, out-of-home advertising can include iPods, PSPs, Vcast-enabled cell phones, satellite radio, an array of digital location-based media networks such as at airports, and word-of-mouth. But the growth of outdoor advertising is not limited to place-based and digital media. Traditional outdoor advertising is growing, as well.