Daily contacts with out-of-home (OOH) advertising grew by 9% year on year in 2013 at a time when other traditional media are seeing a decrease in audience numbers and market share.

The industry’s measurement system MOVE is driving the growth, its administrator the Outdoor Media Association (OMA) says, with the average person encountering 25 advertising faces each day.

The increase of 30 million daily contacts pushed total contacts up to 385 million for the year, as a result of a number of updates to data within the system including market changes, population changes and changes to signage.

“We cracked the half billion revenue mark in 2012 for the first time as an industry, that is close to 2% growth in a very volatile market and having MOVE confirm that our audiences are growing is an added boost to our plans to grow market share this year,” CEO of MOVE Charmaine Moldrich says. “With these new numbers from MOVE, we’re seeing an accurate reflection of the change in the market place and consumer behaviour, and we are poised to capitalise on this.”

Network updates contributed to 3% of the increase, while population changes added 3.5% and signage changes donated the final 2.5% increase in total daily contacts. OOH inventory has been updated to account for changes to size, location, orientation, digital conversion and lighting.

In addition the increases in total daily contacts, the recent government ‘Household Travel Survey’ (HTS) shows people are travelling further when making social and recreational trips, OMA says. Coupled with the national population growth rate of 2.8% the audience is growing and more mobile than before.

“With consumers increasingly spending their time on the move, we’re responding as an industry by embracing innovation of all types,” Moldrich adds. “OOH offers an exciting mix of inventory from billboards to street furniture, transport to retail advertising faces, with the ability to introduce technology and help consumers consume media the way they choose when they’re out and about.”

MOVE will launch its 2013 data update on Wednesday 13 March.