New customers for outdoor advertising

The elimination of outdoor advertising for cigarettes is not shaking a market estimated at 35 million euros last year.
The EU accession came with some bad news for the companies that operate in the tobacco industry, such as the prohibition of cigarette advertising in the outdoor network or in the printed media, except for the media specialised in the tobacco field. Who replaced the cigarette manufacturers on the billboards?
The retailers or the real estate companies are among the newest entries on the outdoor market, according to Lucian Palaz, CEO and deputy president with Affichage Romania, which has 21% of the outdoor market, according to its estimates.
However, Palaz mentions that one should take into account the fact that the outdoor network that was dedicated to the tobacco industry in the past was redistributed to the other industries that were already present on this segment. In his opinion, the investments made by the tobacco manufacturers in the outdoor advertising did not exceed 22% of the entire market value last year.
The outdoor market was expected to experience a small shock caused by the exit of the tobacco producers, which held a major share in the outdoor market (20-30% according to the estimates), with the outdoor companies considered collateral victims.
Yet, the outdoor companies do not seem to feel threatened. The main reason for this is that the market is dynamic and if a player exits, another one takes its place.
The number of empty billboards has increased in Bucharest as well as in the big Romanian cities over the recent weeks. The main reasonable explanation is that the empty billboards are caused by the elimination of cigarette advertising.
This is an “unfortunate” coincidence, according to the representatives of the outdoor companies. “What caused the situation of empty billboards was the sequence of advertising campaigns, not the elimination of cigarette advertising. At the beginning of every year we have a “dead” period, which lasts for two weeks, until we receive the new layouts from our clients,” states Lucian Paz.
Another agency, Vitrina Advertising derives one quarter of its turnover from outdoor advertising.
“The agency has more than 300 outdoor boards at the moment. About 25 of them were used for cigarette advertising,” says Pierina Vintila, Vitrina client service director.
The CEO of Affichage says it is hard to identify a single major investor that will replace the cigarette advertising on the outdoor segment. “There are several companies in different industries that earmark big budgets for this segment,” he says.