Thank you for visiting the new web site for the Great Outdoor Network. It wasn't too far in the past when we began the first edition of the site. There was mixed feelings from media brokers and agents because the web site listed all media companies for public viewing. Media companies too were nervous about placing the information for the public to view or more importantly competitors. To keep the possibilities and opportunities available for advertisers, seemed to answer a higher calling. We wanted to create a network where people can visit and tap into the opportunities, learn about out-of-home and more importantly use more of it. Outdoor advertising is not a sub-culture of advertising but a mainstream powerhouse for those who use it.

There is a passion for the industry. Outdoor Advertising is a wide array of media products from the ridiculous to the sublime and everything in between. The mediums do not fall into spots or rotations, and it is not dependent on a persons actions to be engaged. Outdoor is literally everywhere and avoidable if the placement is accurate for a target audience. Inspired by the actions of David Ogilvy when he wrote article after article only to publish them in major newspapers, which enlightened a whole generation to the power of advertising. The premise was such that through education of these concepts would beget the acceptance of the material. We saw the same opportunity in the out-of-home vertical.

The network affords us the opportunity to share these dynamic mediums and how the biggest brands use them to reach audiences. There is excitement to know that using a few mediums together in a market place, you have the ability to dominate viewers, touch audiences, and create call to action programs. However, if this information remained in the background behind the power spending on print, television, radio and now the internet, the growth of spending in the media would be stagnant.

This has not been the case over the last few years, as more people at the agency level and clients have increased spending in the outdoor media. Various sources tout numbers in the billions. We like to think that a little bit of that expansion is due to the fact that we expose more people every day to the out-of-home industry. More importantly we understand the media companies and realize that the "Great" in The Great Outdoor Network are those companies we represent around the world.

Someone once said, "Love what you do and do it well every day". We live and breathe outdoor and serve as a resource to share our passion to audiences a little more each day. It is because of advertisers we have a job to do, but it is because of outdoor advertising we exist. Thank you for becoming just one more person we reached today.

-Only the best,

Robert E Shockey III CEO