Mid-year figures for out-of home advertising will show a 10 per cent increase in spend, according to Gráinne Dillon of Kinetic, a media planning and buying agency.

The top categories are retail, drink, household services, food and entertainment, while the top advertisers are Diageo, McDonald’s, Sky, Virgin Media, Coca-Cola and Heineken. There’s been a renewed interest in large-format billboards said Dilleen – spend on 48 sheets suffered during the recession – but they are back in the mix for brand-awareness campaigns. And outdoor is fighting back against the pull of device-driven, small-screen digital advertising with digital outdoor out of home (with the unfortunate Homer Simpson-esque acronym “Dooh”.

Dilleen estimates this digital format, usually found in shopping centres, train stations or other highly populated urban centres accounts for 14 per cent of all outdoor advertising. Aside from offering the possibility of doing very short campaigns, less than the traditional outdoor time frame of two weeks, they are reactive – even to the weather. That is something that two brands – Heineken cider brand Orchard Thieves and HB ice-cream – benefited from in this very changeable month. Using “weather-activated creative linked to Met Éireann forecasting – the ads only appear when the sun comes out. Earlier this year, another temperature-reactive campaign for Unilever Sure only appeared on Dooh screens when it reached 17 degrees, with three different pieces of copy running, depending on the time of day.