Welcome to the future.

In the past several years, digital technology has revolutionized the out-of-home advertising industry, ushering in dramatic increases in reproduction quality, while bringing both costs and production lead times down significantly.

John Heiser, vice-president of operations for GHQ Imaging, an ultra-large format printing company in Toronto, says the most important recent advances have come in the areas of resolution and speed.

Image resolution, he says, has increased from a maximum of 70 dpi on most machines to as much as 300 dpi.

Traditional Vutek printers, Heiser adds, used to take three hours to produce a 14 by 48 foot face. With the newest-generation machines, however, the process takes less than an hour. It’s the increased number of inkjets on the printer that accounts for the greater speed, he explains.

Yvonne Gibson, director of marketing and corporate relations for Urban Outdoor Trans Ad, says that advances in production technology have enhanced the overall value of out-of-home, and helped make it more competitive with other media.

Advertisers save through the economies of scale that result when a printer can produce more board faces per hour, she explains. Digital printing is also more cost-effective because it eliminates the film stage.

‘It used to be that you would go from artwork to film to screen or digital tape and then output,’ Gibson says. ‘What’s happening now is that people are going directly from disk to output. That’s happening in both screen and digital printing.’

Peter Wadsworth, president of Toronto-based ICC Reprographics, says that as advertisers and agencies become aware of the capabilities and the economics of the new technologies, they are taking these factors into account when doing strategic planning.

The first advertisers to exploit the opportunities opened up by digital technology were small, local clients – typically retailers – interested in doing short runs. In the past, Wadsworth says, such advertisers could not have afforded to do transit shelters or billboards, because of the cost of film and plates.

Now, he says, bigger advertisers are also figuring out how they can turn the flexibility afforded by digital technology to their advantage.

‘Instead of doing 50 one-off billboards with just one creative execution,’ he explains, ‘they’ll do four or five different executions.’

Wadsworth says the technology also allows for easier customization of individual executions, so that creative can be made more site-specific. Instead of a Starbucks transit shelter that reads, ‘Get a great cup of coffee,’ the message could be, ‘Get a great cup of coffee just 50 feet south.’

Generally speaking, digital printing delivers the greatest efficiencies when used on shorter runs to do a four-color process, Wadsworth says. Traditional methods such as lithography and screen printing are still a more cost-effective option for longer runs and single-color images.

ghq’s Heiser says that with advances in technology, out-of-home now has almost the same kind of immediacy as newspaper or radio. Digital processes, he explains, allow for changes right up to the last minute. Where customers once had to sign off weeks in advance, now they may be signing off a couple of hours before press time.

‘This has caused a lot more stresses for the production environment,’ Heiser says. ‘There’s a lot less room for errors now, and we have to operate around the clock to meet those deadlines.’

For production companies such as ghq, one of the major challenges these days is keeping up with the rapid pace of technological evolution.

Peter Wadsworth, for example, says that ICC Reprographics upgrades to newer and faster computers approximately every six to 12 months, as the latest technology hits the market.

Printer technology is expected to make another giant leap forward in the course of the next 18 months, he adds, with the introduction of digital printers capable of operating at speeds 10 times faster than those currently in use.

Also in this report:

– Fragmentation drives growth in outdoor: As TV becomes less of a true mass medium, more national advertisers are turning to out-of-home to take advantage of its broad reach p.24

– Sick Kids mural touts research: Interactive execution a cogent illustration of the challenges facing medical researchers p.28

– Pattison consolidates under brand umbrella: Move means end to regional names such as Seaboard, Hook and Merchant Media p.28

– Home Hardware gets on track with contest p.30

– Spotlight on Out-of-Home Creative p.31