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Zoom Expands Gym Network in U.K.

Zoom Media has expanded its network with the purchase of Gym Screen Media from Media 42 for an undisclosed sum.

Gym Screen Media boasts digital screens in 160 venues in the U.K. The acquisition brings Zoom’s network of fitness venues in the U.K. to over 650; its global network is now at more than 2,200 venues, according to MediaPost. Zoom recently created a national sales staff for buying ad space in the U.K.

President of Zoom Media Dennis Roche said (via Media Week) that the purchase of Gym TV will help Zoom offer “critical mass of the gym audience for advertisers seeking to reach fitness members across the U.K. market.”

Zoom Media is one company involved in an effort by the Out of Home Video Advertising Bureau to help create a common ratings currency for purchasing advertising across video ad networks. Zoom, along with 10 other media companies, completed third party audience research studies based on the Audience Metrics Guidelines published by OVAB last year.

The members are hoping to moving beyond traffic measures as their media currency to data based on audience impressions. To outline how their audience research was conducted, the companies completed and submitted Audience Metrics Guidelines Disclosure Forms.

More than four in 10 (42%) agency and brand marketers plan to increase their digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising spending through 2009 and the first half of 2010, according to a forecast and industry update report from Adcentricity, which found that total DOOH spending is on target to hit $4.53 billion by 2013, up from $2.6 billion in 2009.

This projection suggests that DOOH is among the fastest-growing media in North America and will account for 44.1% of all OOH spending by 2013, Adcentricity said.