Nearly 800 delegates from around the world gathered in Mexico for the 2025 WOO Global Congress. It was a powerful reminder that out-of-home is not just back, it’s booming.
The conference featured a strong lineup of speakers from across the world, who explored the role of OOH in an increasingly digital media landscape, challenged the industry to raise the bar on creativity and measurement, and shared innovative case studies that demonstrated the unique value of the medium.
From global streaming giants to regional OOH leaders, the consistent message was clear: out-of-home is growing, evolving, and more essential than ever.
Here are the key takeaways from Elizabeth McIntyre, CEO, Outdoor Media Association after a hectic two-day event, that was the talk of the industry.
Day 1
‘It was a huge first day for everyone with nearly 800 attendees from all over the world and the day opened with WOO President Tom Goddard sharing some exciting statistics which really set the tone for the whole conference.
Tom Goddard at the WOO Conference in Mexico.
Global OOH revenue has now hit $46.2 billion, up 10% year-on-year. Outdoor advertising revenues have exceeded $9 billion for the first time.
The APAC region alone represents $22.8 billion of that. It was a powerful reminder that OOH is not only growing, it’s accelerating fast.
The first speaker of the day was Joao Mesquita, LATCANX Director for Amazon Prime Video, and really set a great tone.
His love for OOH shone through as he challenged the industry to rise to the digital occasion.
He posed some challenging but interesting questions for the industry and essentially challenged OOH to rise to the occasion.
He wanted us to think about whether we are:
Prepared to share the stage with digital
Operate seamlessly
Provide a credible measurement systems for granularity
Joao made some interesting points about stressing that creativity is key, clear message branding and the industry needs to be harder on CMOs with creative, after all, when it doesn’t work it reflects poorly on OOH as a medium and not necessarily the campaign.
Joao Mesquita on-stage with Tom Goddard.
Joao also gave delegates of movie releases with high impact and was clear how OOH created talkability and, of course, social content.
With DOOH, he explained that integration enables smarter platform solutions and that digital lowers the cost of production and speeds up execution.
He asked the industry to come up with more tools for measurement (luckily in Australia we have sorted both with MOVE and the OASIS tool for standardisation)
I really liked the point he made about people wanting to like being informed and needing a measurement system they can trust. This is such a hurdle for many countries but I’m really proud that MOVE is world-leading.
One slide that Joao presented really resonated because it showed me what agencies and clients don’t always want to say about OOH:
It’s hard to communicate complex messages through OOH
High effort is needed for strong campaign execution
Agencies often lack OOH expertise
Limited tools and unclear ROI often create barriers
Low cost buying models restrict operational scale
Lack of trusted measurement deters cautious leaders
As a result if agencies and advertisers are afraid of taking the risk, OOH is left out.
The second Speaker was Gabriel Cedrone, who is LATAM CEO.
He provided a really unique perspective on what’s happening in Latin America, with more than 500 members, they have just launched OOHTV to communicate with their members.
His presentation concentrated on how OOH adds real value to people’s lives. He gave some examples of the “green walls – plants” that surround a lot of OOH sites. The recycling BIOBOX (where you can recycle bottles and cans) are often provided by OOH companies which is a really interesting role that OOH can play, particularly in developing countries.
Next up was Australia’s very own Cathy O’Connor, CEO of oOh!media talking about retail OOH and the REO business within OOH.
Cathy spoke about retail media and gave a case study of Pet Barn, that has a long term omnichannel presence bringing endemic and non-endemic brands together. She then gave a personal case study about her own dog Ernie and the street to the shelf purchase pathway.
I was also asked to join the Advisory Board of the Women in WOO, organised by the World Out of Home Organisation and charged with promoting connections, sharing best practice, providing support and inspiring women throughout the OOH industry.
Women in WOO will set up an exclusive Mentoring program to support and grow Senior Female Leaders within OOH.
The day ended with the WOO Awards, and as everyone will have seen, SpecSavers won the Classic Award campaign, just as they did at the inaugural OMA Awards in Australia. Lions also won 3rd place for their XXXX special-builds.’
The winner of the WOO Classic Award.
Day 2
‘Day two started with a great presentation focusing on the power of AI in this space. JCDecaux, Group Chief Data Officer, Sylvain Le Borgne spoke a lot about the role of media and particular OOH.
He quoted the great Marshall McLuhan who said, “the media are not just channels of communication, but forces that shape our reality.”
He then spoke about how in some countries JCD were predicting the number of bicycles and spaces available at stations – powered by AI.
He also explained how JCD are using AI to forecast maintenance on their street furniture – adapting luminosity throughout the day, turning on ventilators, in-situ maintenance and monitoring the state of the asset. All these things are so important.
Woo Conference in Mexico
Next powerful speaker was Tim Bleakley Chairman – Ocean Media, he spoke passionately about making outdoor creative again – something here in Australia, we are also passionate about.
Then it was time for my presentation. I spoke about Australia is measuring OOH through MOVE, how it has evolved over the last ten years and how granular the detail is going to be on all formats, 24/7 365 days per week with seasonality.
Specific examples of how MOVE measures trip purpose and a quiz at the end, bought to our data to life and made it easy to understand.
The feedback was great. Everyone loved how engaging and interactive the content was, as I explained how trips all around Australia would be measured using different OOH formats, with different travel tickets/boarding passes, making the research highly entertaining.
Clearly our members enjoyed MOVE being showcased to the world showing the sophistication of the Australian Outdoor marketing and how sophisticated it is, especially with measurement.’