The outdoor company’s City of Sydney expansions have allowed it to provide national coverage for advertising campaigns, including 96 per cent of the Sydney metropolitan region.
QMS chief sales officer Tim Murphy told B&T its expanding Sydney metropolitan network of large format screens, have already been paying dividends by significantly increasing advertisers reach across Australia’s largest city.
In January, QMS took over a Transport for NSW contract that included high-traffic locations in Cremorne on Military Road, Crows Nest on the Gore Hill Freeway, Maroubra on Anzac Parade, North Ryde on Epping Road, Wiley Park on King Georges Road, and Blakehurst on the Princes Highway. In mid-2024, QMS won a contract with the Hills Shire Council, which followed a lucrative City of Sydney street furniture contract that was secured in 2020 and previously handled by JCDecaux.
“It takes time to build out a digital large format network, but since around mid-2023 through to what took place in January this year, with the the launch of the Transport for New South Wales assets that were obtained from JCDecaux, it’s been an incredible step change, not only for our business, but for the landscape at large,” Murphy said.
“We’ve been able to increase our audience reach by 40 per cent over that period of time, and have now got an incredible national digital, large format footprint, which has us more than competing with any other player in the market when it comes to quality and reach from a large format point of view.”
Murphy said the Sydney expansion has allowed QMS to offer advertisers national campaign coverage whereas previously the company would have to partner with other suppliers to cover any gaps in the network.
He said that about two thirds of the briefs QMS receives are for national campaigns and QMS’ network expansion, digitisation and modernisation has been a “share-shifting moment”.
This came to the fore during its partnership with the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games, where the network helped advertisers including Allianz, Toyota Australia, Woolworths, Stan, Patties Food Group and Bupa reach 11.5 million Australians.
More than 80,000 pieces of dynamic content, celebrating key Olympic and Paralympic moments, was served across the six weeks of Olympic and Paralympic activity, which QMS said drove significant brand lifts among exposed audiences, including sponsorship awareness (+8.5pts), affinity (+5.9pts), brand difference (+7.6pts), consideration (+7.6pts), and desired brand perceptions (+6.7pts) when compared to those who were not exposed.
“The partners that we worked with were really pleased with the outcomes that they were able to drive,” Murphy said. “From a QMS point of view, it definitely delivered on some strong revenue performances that lined up with the expectations that we had set out to achieve.
“It gave the business a lot of confidence around how we can use our network to its full potential and the flow on effect from that was that advertisers, creative agencies and other partners saw what that opportunity can truly be.
“We’ve definitely seen a step change in the briefs that we’re getting in 2025; there’s a greater appetite for more dynamic, creative and 3D content.”
Earlier this year, QMS worked with Wavemaker and Made This to launch Australia’s first programmatic high impact 3DOOH campaign, for global beauty brand, Garnier.
The digital outdoor company is preparing to go to market for the 2026 Cortina Winter Olympic Games in May.
