PERTH: Out-of-home (OOH) opportunities for advertisers are growing across major urban areas in Australia, new data show.

Audiences in 2015 have grown by an average 3.4% across all mainland capital cities and have also grown across the suite of OOH formats, B&T reported.

Figures from MOVE (Measurement of Outdoor Visibility and Exposure) estimate that OOH initiatives can now reach 12.2m Australians daily as they make 51m trips in the country's top five metropolitan areas.

All five mainland cities saw outdoor audiences increase. Perth led with an increase of 6.4% year-on-year, followed by Melbourne (+5.1%), Adelaide (+5.0%), Brisbane (+2.8%) and Sydney (+1.6%).

"We find ourselves in an enviable position, as fragmentation of other traditional media channels solidifies our position, because the undeniable fact is that our audiences keep growing," said Charmaine Moldrich, CEO of the Outdoor Media Association and MOVE.

With growth, comes innovation. Australia's largest outdoor advertising company, Ooh! Media, claimed a world-first in out-of-home (OOH) engagement with its consumer-targeted interactive retail screens, according to Digital Signage Today.

The screens, set to be prominent in Australian malls and airports, include multi-touch displays, gesture response, voice recognition technology, HD Web cams, wi-fi, audio and networking capabilities. The interactive screens allow integration of outdoor content directly with a campaign's online, mobile and social channels.

Outdoor is a major growth area in Australian advertising, despite accounting for just 5.3% of all Australian advertising spend. Industry revenues in the OOH sector are up 16.8% so far this year on top of record breaking annual growth of 10% in 2014.

A number of factors are influencing advertisers' media decisions including: employment levels across 17,800 separate travel zones; changes to transport infrastructure; changes to public transport routes; new signs and updates to trip attractors in each travel zone, including shopping centres and school enrolments.

Data sourced from B&T, Digital Signage Today; additional content by Warc staff