• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, April 6, 2005

The leading competitive ad monitoring services are getting, well, competitive again. In the span of 24-hours, both Nielsen Media Research and Taylor Nelson Sofres announced upgrades to the media they measure in their U.S. ad tracking services.

In a potential boon to the outdoor media industry, Nielsen's Monitor-Plus unit Tuesday announced it had significantly increased the number of outdoor media companies it tracks in its out-of-home measurement reports, bringing the total number of markets measured to more than 150.

"This expansion reflects an approximate 60% increase in reported outdoor advertising revenue," estimated Jeff King, senior vice president-managing director of Monitor-Plus.

Monitor-Plus also released new estimates on outdoor ad spending for 2004 based on the increased database, showing that the top 15 outdoor ad markets accounted for $1.86 billion, with individual markets ranging from $379 million in New York to $56 million in Las Vegas. The data also reveals that Orlando and Las Vegas are now the biggest markets in terms of share of ad spending taken by outdoor media.

The upgrades follow a relatively strong year for the outdoor ad industry, which is expected to grow rapidly over the next several years due to improvements in outdoor audience measurement. Nielsen Media Research has begun rolling out a promising new system utilizing global positioning satellite technology that can more accurately measure exposure to outdoor ad campaigns. Another company, Atlanta-based Navigauge also is rolling out a system using GPS technology in cars to measure outdoor, as well as radio.

Meanwhile, the Traffic Audit Bureau, Nielsen and others are expected to ratify a new method of estimating the total audience exposure of outdoor ads that could become an important new media planning tool.

In 2004, outdoor ad spending in the U.S. rose to more than $5.5 billion, an increase of 91 percent over the past 10 years, according to a report released recently by Mediaedge:cia's MediaLab. The report also released findings from a portion of its so-called "Sensor Series" of studies, which indicated the performance of outdoor ads is comparable to other major media.

"Billboards are noticed and considered at similar rates to traditional TV and radio ads. Although consumers are less likely to notice other forms of outdoor media they are also less likely to be annoyed by it," the report found.

Meanwhile, TNS Media Intelligence (formerly CMR), Monday announced it a significant expansion to the number of radio markets it tracks advertising for. The company initially said it would be tracking actual ad "expenditures" - meaning total ad dollars for the medium - but on Tuesday corrected that to say it would only be measuring occurrences, or ad units running on the radio stations it measures.