• by Ben Frederick  @mp_benfred, May 31, 2016

Rouge Media, a Toronto-based out of home (OOH) media company, announced the acquisition of On-Campus Media, the largest U.S. College digital out-of-home advertising network today.

The acquisition will give Rouge control of all of On-Campus’s digital video, online and mobile assets. Rouge will also expand its U.S. network by 450 college campuses, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Penn State.

On-Campus reaches, per the company, over 6 million students daily in the U.S. and Canada.

“We launched in the U.S. four years ago with our beauty network, reaching women 18-plus exclusively. After seeing how progressive the OOH industry is in the U.S., we knew we wanted to do expand into other place-based environments,” stated Alison Jacobs, EVP North America, “This acquisition allows us to expand our Campus network to the U.S. in a strategic and impactful way.”

Rouge has plenty of experience with digital OOH (DOOH) placements, launching 1,000 digital units within its existing network last year that included charging stations.

“We see tremendous opportunity and rapid growth in digital place-based media,” stated Martin Poitras, CEO & Founder. Rouge will bring products "we successfully offer in Canada to the U.S. Campus network, such as amplification and mobile targeting.”

The OOH market is growing — globally the forecast growth rate for OOH has been placed at 4.6% between 2013 and 2018, with DOOH seeing a 16.2% growth rate within the same time period.

Much of that growth is due to the effect mobile data has had on attribution and measurement for OOH placements, and the confidence those metrics afford advertisers.

This being an election year, political advertisers have contributed to growth in the U.S. as well.