2024 End of Year Wrap
As the year ends, it’s time to reflect on the past 12 months, a year defined by innovation, collaboration, and growth for our digital-out-of-home (DOOH) network.
Network expansion
This year, we accelerated the growth of our DOOH network into new markets outside of the capital cities including Edinburgh, Bristol, Lyon, Bordeaux, Marseille, Nantes and Lille. Unlike other DOOH networks that are MFA (Made For Advertising), ECN’s first purpose is to enhance customer experience on behalf of our property partners, and we have seen a 14% increase in content being used for this reason in 2024.
We finished the year with almost 900 DOOH screens in 570 connected offices across 25 cities in the UK, France, Germany and Belgium.
Customer satisfaction
ECN content makes it easy for building managers to communicate with their tenants and our service is highly valued. In our most recent customer survey, ECN achieved an NPS (Net Promoter Score) of 53.
More brands
Advertising funds our service and this year we experienced a 18% increase in our advertiser brand count. Programmatic (pDOOH) is a key growth driver and it now represents over 30% of our business, which is significantly higher than the industry average. The future for programmatic DOOH is bright, with a recent survey by VIOOH forecasting 28% growth in the next 18 months. We see this daily as more pDOOH campaigns activate on screens across our markets, driven by data using contextual and location targeting.
Innovation
Innovation is a key strategic pillar and in 2024, we ran our numerous 3D (3DOOH) campaigns for clients including Optimum Nutrition, Audi, Sprite, Nissan and Aldi Supermarket. The Optimum Nutrition campaign is worth highlighting because this was (at the time) a world first 3DOOH campaign, running across 850 DOOH screens across 3 countries (UK, France and Germany). A big thanks to Talon for their collaboration on this partnership.
2024 was the year of AI. In partnership with partners including Hivestack, Placeexchange, Vistarmedia, tradedesk, displayce, AI is deployed to dynamically adjust messaging based on factors such as time of day, weather, and audience demographics in real time across our network.
Content alignment; We saw more brands such as Tui aligning their advertising to the surrounding content to enhance the contextual nature of their campaign.
Data
Data-driven planning sits at the epicentre of consumer targeting, determining whether campaigns will be single or omnichannel. We invested heavily and towards the end of the year, we extended our relationship with Locomizer to provide location data across all of our markets.
We also worked with Happydemics to deliver 20+ case studies, which used data to prove the effectiveness of the ECN DOOH network. Towards the end the year we built a new data warehouse which in the near future will allow our programmatic partners to access audience data as required.
Sustainability
We made rapid progress on the ESG front.
Firstly, we reduced our operating emissions by 5% (CY23 v CY22), part of our commitment to reduce our Scope 1&2 emissions by 80% by 2030.
We were also nominated as a finalist at the World Out of Home Organization Awards in the Sustainability category.
Giving back to communities is a big part of our ESG plan, and we signed partnerships with 4ocean and Justdiggit, two companies doing outstanding work to improve and repair our sea and land ecosystems.
We are also transitioning eco-friendly screen technology, reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions.
“We thank our clients, partners, and team members for making 2024 a milestone year and look forward to another rewarding year in 2025” – Charles Parry-Okeden, Global CEO
Looking Ahead
With office attendance increasing once again, 2025 looks exciting. As we look towards the horizon, we will:
- Grow our coverage in existing markets and expand into new markets
- Expand our programmatic channel with the addition of new supply and demand partners
- Have an unrelenting focus on ESG
- Strengthening partnerships with advertisers, agencies, and communities to create even more impactful campaigns.
Here’s to an even more dynamic and successful 2025.