Antonio Jiménez

Could you tell us about current trends in the Mexican outdoor advertising sector?

The market is currently recovering from the impact of the pandemic. Advertising in Mexico fell by 54% last year, and our company was forced to adapt to this new reality. We have labeled it the year of resilience. We had to ask for support from our providers and strategic partners. Thanks to this we were able to mitigate the industry’s most critical moment in history. Today, reaching people is far easier and quicker. The Out of Home (OOH) advertising industry has never stopped growing in history, which is what makes 2020 unique for the sector. We experienced two completely different behaviors in the brands. On the one hand most of the big OOH announcers in main verticals suddenly stopped their advertising campaigns, while others took advantage of the opportunity to increase their brand exposure and build awareness such as streaming platforms and e-commerce. Technology and big data companies are the first ones to use outdoor advertising as they have evidence this is the best way to promote their brands. Outdoor advertising is complementary to other forms of advertising. We are mass audience medium and reach a large-scale audience while digital campaigns are focused on a smaller audience base. OOH has demonstrated it can work very well complementing digital and mobile campaigns reaching massive audiences.

There is a strong competition for attention. How is your company adapting to this new context?

Time spent by a person on a digital advertisement is most likely less than half a second. Therefore, OOH allows brands to impact the audience in a friendly non-skippable manner. With the digital technology in the advertising screens, we can adapt the creativities taking advantage of the contextual environment and make that advertising impression worth much more for brands. A person’s mood changes over the course of the day, so the messages they receive should also change during their customer journey. OOH advertising is working on this matter and trying to remain as relevant as possible delivering contextual marketing messages. We have the ability to adapt the advertising messages on real time to make those messages more relevant for the audience. Digital OOH is bringing brands the ability to be dynamic and contextual on real time.

Can you tell us about technology and recent investments?

Digital technology is allowing brands the possibility to connect social media feeds to the digital boards on the streets. Some beauty brands have been able to ask users for “beauty” pictures that were posted into the digital screens on real time. This possibility allowed the brand to boost and amplify the social media activity driving engagement. With the in-house developed application called Switch, we enabled brands to communicate in real time whatever is happening in the city. This happened with movie premieres. The audience can see what is going on in that exact moment in any place in their city. Another example, we partnered on a huge campaign with a social media brand during the elections to inform Mexican voters. We also streamed live the national debate. Clear Channel is a company looking to innovate and stand out from other operators.

What are your goals for next year?

The most important goal is to return to 2019 revenue levels. After this challenging episode, our goal is to manage our growth in the most efficient way. We have reviewed all the internal procedures and dimensioned the organization to face growth in a efficient way. Growing in footprint in Mexico is also one of our goals, as this market has a huge growth potential. In addition, we have analyzed several opportunities in the Mexican market that we’d like to pursue. This is the moment to continue investing and keep growing in this market.