WPP consolidates Mediaedge, MindShare into single out-of-home advertising firm

This news from the UK suggests that the out-of-home market is really heating up:

[O]ut-of-home [advertising] - whether it's on billboards, in cinema, elevators or even retail-based media networks - is looking like a surer bet for reaching "captive" audiences. That fact has not escaped the major agency holding companies, which have been reinvesting and restructuring their outdoor media assets in an effort to grab share in what is projected to be a rapidly rising market.

...
Those facts apparently have not escaped WPP chief Sir Martin Sorrell, who has been talking up the value and role of out-of-home, and who on Monday announced a restructuring that would combine the outdoor media operations of Mediaedge:cia and MindShare with leading out-of-home media company Poster Publicity to form a new entity: Kinetic.

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Meanwhile, Miller estimates Kinetics global media billings to be about $2 billion, and projects it will grow by another $1 billion within a year, through a combination of "organic growth," acquisitions and consolidation with other WPP units. That, he says, would make Kinetic the world's largest out-of-home media buyer, surpassing Aegis Group's Posterscope, Omnicom's Outdoor Media Group, Interpublic's Outdoor Services unit, and Publicis' outdoor media operations.


Read the whole (very informative) article here.