For an industry that prides itself on reach, campaigns don’t always end up being planned that way. National is often the ambition, but in reality, plans tend to lean metro-first, with regional considered later in the process. Not by design, but by how plans naturally come together, writes Kirrily Hirst, director of sales, GoTransit Media Group.
That’s the gap.
Because it doesn’t reflect the country we’re trying to reach. More than a third of Australians live outside capital cities, representing 38 per cent of the population. These are commercially active, influential audiences, yet for years they’ve been harder to quantify and easier to deprioritise. They’ve never been invisible. They’ve been underrepresented in how we measure and plan.
MOVE is a step forward in addressing that within out-of-home. For the first time, audiences across metro and regional markets are measurable within the same framework through MOVE, establishing a unified measurement currency for the OOH industry. What was once less visible is now clearer, and the scale is hard to ignore. GoTransit’s network alone reaches more than 19 million Australians each month, including over 10 million people outside capital cities. This isn’t incremental. It’s a fundamental part of how brands connect nationally.
What’s often overlooked is the quality of those audiences. A third of bus audiences are managers and professionals, challenging the idea that regional and transit are simply about mass reach. These are high value audiences that are often harder to reach consistently through other channels.
This is where the conversation needs to shift from measurement to mindset. If planning continues to favour the easiest audiences to measure, rather than the most valuable to reach, effectiveness is limited before a campaign even goes live.
OOH has become one of the most powerful channels in this context because it operates in the real world. It reaches people at scale, consistently, in environments they actively move through. It cannot be skipped or filtered in the same way as other channels, and that translates into both reach and attention.
As media environments become more fragmented and cluttered, brands are shifting their focus from pure reach to attention. It’s no longer enough to be in front of people, campaigns need to cut through, be noticed and be remembered. The introduction of attention metrics through MOVE reinforces what the industry has long understood, that OOH delivers sustained, high-quality attention at scale.
Transit amplifies this further. It delivers repeated exposure, high visibility and strong engagement, particularly among younger audiences, where bus advertising is actively noticed by 80 per cent of 14 to 17 year olds. At a time when brands face increasing limitations in how they reach this audience through digital and social channels, that kind of visibility is becoming harder to replicate elsewhere. More importantly, it embeds campaigns into communities and builds familiarity over time, which is where real brand impact is created.
The data is stronger. The effectiveness is proven. What hasn’t fully caught up is how we plan.
If campaigns are to genuinely deliver national outcomes, regional cannot continue to sit at the edge of the conversation. It needs to be considered alongside metro from the outset. Growth won’t come from doing more of the same. It will come from expanding how we define reach, how we value audiences and how we plan for them.
OOH is uniquely positioned to support that shift. It already operates at scale across both metro and regional markets, connecting brands with audiences in the environments where they live and move.
There is more to do, but the introduction of MOVE through the Outdoor Media Association is a step forward for the industry. It gives us a clearer, more consistent view of audiences across both metro and regional markets. The shift now is in how we show up in conversations with brands, how we position regional alongside metro, and how we use that data to shape planning decisions.
Written by Kirrily Hirst, director of sales, GoTransit Media Group.
