On today's Billboard Insider podcast, OAAA President and CEO Anna Bager highlights the out of home stories to watch in 2024 and what brands are saying about out of home. What are some important stories to watch in 2024 2024 is an election year that's going to be huge and will be very interesting to follow.  It's not only a presidential election year in the US, it's an election year globally.  Next year over half of the world's population will be voting which means that messaging is going to be incredibly important.  It's a huge opportunity for our industry especially I think in the US as...signage that we can put out there for the elections will be incredibly important....It's an Olympic year next year.  The Olympics typically drive a lot more ad dollars so that's something for us to watch... OAAA President Anna Bager What brands and agencies are saying about out of home.   They still feel that our medium is a little hard to understand...we talk about airports, we talk about place-based, we talk about roadside, we talk about transit. We're all out of home...there's no need to increase fragmentation - to make ourselves look more complicated.  We need to make ourselves look more simpler and go to market with a very simple crisp message and that's something we hear from brands a lot...We are making ourselves a little hard to understand and we're not talking maybe enough about what we can do for them but rather who we are... I think that something else that stands out is - lead with creativity... we have some incredible creative tools and canvases in our industry and...brands think that we should push more... ...More brands want to buy out of home programmatically...programmatic is on the rise and if that's how brands and agencies want to buy us we should make sure that we that we're up for that... Measurement is still a very big factor.  How do we simplify our measurement?  What are the metrics that matter and how do we bring those forward to brands?  How do we make them feel that our the medium is not just measurable but also comparable to other platforms they're buying... MRC accreditation that will be happening...probably early March of this year so in about a month from when this is being recorded...that's a good first step...but you know we still have a lot of work to do. The April 2024 out of home conference We're going to be in an absolutely amazing place beautiful resort in Carlsbad outside of San Diego and in the end of April... a nice place to both network learn more about the industry hopefully do a lot of business and relax and have fun...we're in the midst of programming right now we're still very open to new ideas...this year we're going to have more brands than we've ever had...we'll also have a lot more folks from the agency side The OAAA Independent Media Company Advisory Group The independent billboard operators are hugely important part of the OAAA they're a big part of our member base...It's led by Diana Stevenson from Grace Outdoor...it's 20 or some companies that meet fairly regularly and talk about what's happening in the different markets what would they like to see from the OAAA what are concerns, what are things they're excited about, how are the different types of verticals responding to out of home..Just kind of getting together to talk about the market.  It's super helpful for us at the OAAA...If there's somebody listening who feels that they really want to be a part of it please ping me and let me know.  The members are listed on our website. To receive a free morning newsletter with each day's Billboard insider articles email [email protected] with the word "Subscribe" in the title.  Our newsletter is free and we don't sell our subscriber list