Focus Media continues to rock

From their quarterly numbers:

• In the first quarter of 2008, digital out-of-home advertising revenue was $108.7 million, up 113.4% year-over-year.

• Advertising service revenue from their commercial location network, including revenue from LCD display networks, outdoor digital and non-digital billboard networks and movie theater advertising network, grew 96.8% year-over-year to $62.3 million.

• Advertising service revenue from their in-store network, including revenues from CGEN Digital Media Company Limited ("CGEN"), was $17.3 million, an increase of 160.2% year-over-year. On January 2, 2008, Focus completed the acquisition of CGEN, which has significantly strengthened their market leadership in the in-store advertising market.

• Advertising service revenue from their in-elevator poster frame network grew 130.3% year-over-year to $29.2 million

A few things to note here: first of all, the Chinese out-of-home market is absolutely insane right now. Between the overall population growth in cities (mostly due to migration, not births), the rapid rise of the middle class, and the upcoming summer Olympics, everybody is pumping money into outdoor and OOH spots. Second, Focus has, in my opinion, continued to execute their strategy brilliantly (save possibly for a little dust-up with the Chinese government over some mobile spam ads that they were allegedly sending). The management team snapped up their most challenging competitors before they ever had a chance to really compete, and their expansion into additional media like Internet and mobile has given them a nicely diversified revenue base.

I'm also quite pleased that they split up their OOH revenues by type, since that gives us a very interesting picture of the relative values of each type of screen. I just might have to dig into the numbers a bit deeper to see how much more or less valuable an elevator screen is perceived to be than, say, a screen in a commercial building.

Tags: digital signage, focus media, out-of-home advertising, fmcn