Diageo has emerged as the biggest spender in out-of-home advertising in the first six months of 2015, with a spend of €2.8 million. New figures from OMA/Nielsen show overall expenditure for out of home (OOH) was €50.4 million across large-format billboards, six sheets, transport, targeted media and digital OOH formats. That's an increase of 4 per cent compared with the same period last year.

The largest category is drink – made up of alcoholic beverages, soft drinks and hot drinks. It accounted for €8.6 million and 17 per cent of total spend. Heineken, which launched its first cider product, Orchard Thieves, and Coca-Cola were the seventh and and 11th overall biggest advertisers, spending €1.2 million and €970,000 respectively.

The campaign most recalled unprompted from January to June 2015 was Coca-Cola's Kiss campaign, at 73 per cent, according to Kinetic's post-campaign researcher service, Researcher.

The "household services" category – led by telecoms – was the second largest category with an OOH spend of €8.4 million. Sky and UPC both invested heavily in OOH, with Sky at €1.8 million spending slightly more than UPC's €1.7 million. Food was the third top-spending category, accounting for €6.4 million of the total OOH activity, with Mondelez and Unilever the top advertisers.

And the impending introduction of the health insurance levy in May prompted insurers to get out there and advertise for a slice of the business, with Vhi Healthcare spending €1.3 million on outdoor in the first six months of the year.