Assem Khalifa moderates the OOH Night’s first discussion panel, revealing the outdoor market challenges

As promised in the previous part, the voice of the OOH, INSITE OOH is delivering the second part of the coverage of INSITE Marketplace’s grand event in the Four Seasons Hotel at Plaza Ballroom to reveal the details of the discussion panel held as part of the OOH Night, moderated by Assem Khalifa, head of the International Advertising Association of Egypt, hosting five of the industry tycoons to join the narrative, discussing “The advertising challenges and the role of technology in the industry.

Dr. Hesham Hussein, Egyptian Parliament Member and Founder & CEO of DIGI Print, Ahmed El-Sharif, CEO of FiveStars Group, Dr. Haytham Erfan, CEO of Elan Masr, Mohamed El-Kilany, Deputy GM of EAMA Advertising, and Ayman Sobhy, CEO of MegaPrint have gathered to give us layers of their expertise and how they are perceiving the OOH landscape’s challenges the moment we are speaking.

The panel started with Assem Khalifa generally asking the five OOH musketeers to tell us more about the challenges that are holding the out-of-home market back and how they can push the market forward to keep the developing process on. Ayman Sobhy took the lead to answer that the construction process that is taking place on the roads of Cairo is surely affecting the industry, moreover, the cost has gone up so high, so fast, while the competition is growing day by day, so to get the right client, convince them with the cost, including the official license and the maintenance work, in addition to hunting them among many other successful media owners and providers is a battle hard to win. “Our profit margin has shrunk out this year, most of us are ending the year with much loss due to the new laws and regulations abided on the industry” Dr. Hesham Hussein declared, a topic he will talk into details in our third part coverage of the OOH Night.

As someone who had a long history in the printing houses, building his empire by starting with one of the technical aspects in the OOH market then expanded to found FiveStars Group, Ahmed El-Sharif mentioned that the real challenge facing the printing industry is that it won’t be printed, it will fade away! “The digital billboards are taking over the streets of Europe for example” and this is both a challenge and a way of development. He continued that the future has always been going towards the digitalization of OOH, giving the clients the capabilities of choosing when and for how long they can display their campaign, paying less for more, which is something El-Sharif has noticed all over Europe spreading even on the small formats of outdoor ad-spaces, such as lampposts, where most of them has turned from being a traditional billboard to a digital one.

According to Dr.Haytham Erfan, the biggest challenge that OOH media is facing right now is the pricing distortion among the OOH stakeholders, where each one is setting a different price range for their locations from the others. “Fair competition is always legal, but to compete in the wrong way will lead us all to failure” Erfan declared. He also mentioned that the clutter of locations on the roads is causing clients to avoid certain locations in certain districts that used to be extremely popular.

Wait for us in the third part of the OOH Night coverage to know more about Legitimacy and The Industry, where Dr.Hesham Hussein reveals more about the new law of advertisement and how the OOH stakeholders could stand and face its consequences.