Wildstone is Europe’s leading owner of outdoor media infrastructure and is at the forefront of digitally transforming the OOH sector. Damian Cox, Founder and CEO, told Digital Signage Pulse about the strength of billboards, the digitisation of OOH and the company’s growth ambitions.
Damian Cox, Founder and CEO, Wildstone. Copyright James Robinson.
Tell us about Wildstone. Who are you, and what do you do?
We’re Europe’s leading owner of outdoor media infrastructure, operating a portfolio of over 5,300 OOH assets including 48-sheet screens, classic paper and paste billboards, and super-premium digital sites. Our growing portfolio includes assets across the UK, Ireland, The Netherlands, Germany and Spain.
We’re also experts in digitising OOH media assets by converting traditional paper billboards into beautiful, high quality, ultra slim, lightweight digital screens, using next-generation LED screen technology.
Billboards have been around for hundreds of years. How do you explain their survival in today’s modern digital marketing environment?
Let’s be clear: OOH – and specifically DOOH – isn’t just surviving. It’s flourishing. OOH spend is forecast to grow from $41.9bn USD in 2023 to $45.3bn USD in 2024. Global DOOH expenditure rose to $16.7bn USD in 2023 representing almost 37% of all OOH revenues and remains the main driver of OOH revenue growth worldwide (data from World OOH survey).
Why are billboards so brilliant? They’re affordable, accessible, and highly visible. They don’t discriminate and can’t be turned off. Thanks to digitisation, they’re also now highly customisable and responsive.
Audiences also trust billboards, and they provide the most effective form of cut through in what is today’s digital advertising and marketing mess. All TikTok fads and Instagram “influencers” offer is volatility: billboards, on the other hand, are tried, tested and proven.
Billboards also offer landlords a new avenue to monetise their land and extract capital from their assets. Empowering private landlords and councils to unlock new revenue streams from what they previously thought was a dead piece of land is extremely rewarding.
What does digitisation mean to you?
When Wildstone was founded, we had two aims: to becoming the largest aggregator of outdoor media infrastructure assets in the world, and to digitally transform the sector.
The market benefits of digitisation will be well known to your readers and need no introduction. But for me, personally, one of the greatest benefits of digitisation is that it makes billboards more beautiful.
One of our responsibilities as a billboard owner is to benefit, not degrade, the environment in which we operate. We need to reignite the idea of beautiful billboards – architecturally stunning assets within city centres, that don’t look like ugly cake tins with a screen squashed in them.
I am personally extremely passionate about design and architecture, and if you design something beautifully, brands will want to be associated with it. Digitisation is playing a huge role in this.
We want to digitally transform, and make billboards more beautiful, in a way that leaves the world in a better place than how we found it.
Our aim is to make all our screens completely recyclable, with technology that can last two, or even three decades, not one, and to do so with a quarter of the power that other screens use. Developing that technology takes time and requires considerable investment, but it’s something we are committed to.
Storm Cromination, one of Wildstone’s iconic sites
What is your relationship with media operators?
We’re an ideal partner for media operators looking to accelerate growth and increase revenue. Capital, resource and expertise for digital expansion is often challenging for some media operators who would rather focus on what they do best – their core business of selling OOH advertising.
This is where we come in, by offering a unique “sale and leaseback” partnership, which allows media operators to release capital by selling billboards to us. We then invest the capex and expertise required to digitise the sites, meaning media operators can upgrade their portfolio sooner and at no cost.
The digital panels are then leased back to the media operator so they can focus on selling digital slots and generating greater revenue. It ensures everyone is a winner and can play to their strengths.
This model has worked with great success in the UK, where we have transformed the market and facilitated the growth of several key players. We are now actively replicating it in other territories across Europe and beyond.
What are Wildstone’s growth ambitions?
We launched in 2010 and have grown incredibly quickly. We were acquired by DigitalBridge in 2020, and then sold to Antin Infrastructure Partners two years later.
It may sound cliched, but Wildstone is only at the start of its journey. Overall, we’re still in our infancy. So many OOH assets are ripe for digitisation; we are fiercely focussed on leading this drive and doing so in a sustainable way that also benefits landlords.
We want to grow in three ways: firstly, by acquiring and developing more assets. So many private landlords and councils don’t realise the goldmine they are potentially sitting on, and I anticipate billboard numbers will increase by 20,000-30,000 across Europe over the next ten years.
Secondly, by digitising more of the traditional billboards that we own and acquire. Finally, by expanding our international footprint, both across Europe and then further afield. APAC and the US have huge potential, and we’d like to have a significant footprint in those territories.
What are the next big developments in the DOOH space?
Data will continue to play an important role. It’s always been there, but its importance will grow, especially with the growth of programmatic. Technology will develop too, but in which direction – who knows?
It could be very, very low power consumption technology for digital boards. It could be boards that require next to no infrastructure, or that never needs to be changed. It could be 3D, or it could be greater integration of AI to drive personalization and contextual advertising. Most likely, it will be all of these.
The beauty of OOH is that, despite it being one of oldest forms of advertising, it’s an ever-shifting landscape – and the next opportunity to optimise and transform is only ever around the corner.
Learn more about Wildstone here.