• by Paul Gough , September 10, 2002

Arbitron’s development of a ratings system for the out-of-home industry is moving to the next step after initial testing this summer.

The system is being designed to give the industry audience data comparable to the kind that has been available for other media for years. It’s the result of a survey Arbitron conducted with the outdoor advertising industry and its trade group, the Outdoor Advertising Association of America. Outdoor advertising is a $4.832 billion annual business, although questions of reach and frequency -- and more importantly, demographics -- have been debated for years.

Arbitron announced last June that it would explore the best way to measure audiences with a variety of traditional and electronic-based methodologies. But it quickly found that a low-tech, diary-based system would work better right now, said Jacqueline Noel, Arbitron’s director of sales and marketing.

“The high-tech solutions are very expensive and it doesn’t look like it would be practical [at least for now] … We are going to continue to monitor it for the long-term,” she said.

Advertisers, agencies and the outdoor industry wanted demographic information about who sees the out-of-home advertising, including age, sex and gender plus shopping and buying information. Arbitron, through its Scarborough division, provides information on shopping and buying behavior and the roads traveled. The outdoor industry uses data from the Traffic Audit Bureau to determine how many cars travel past a given billboard.

Arbitron’s new service would build upon data from Scarborough and the Traffic Audit Bureau to provide a clearer picture of the out-of-home audience, Noel said. Data planned include demographics, Metro and DMA figures and reach, frequency and gross ratings points.

The diary-based system is similar to Arbitron’s ratings systems for other media. Participants fill out a diary of the roads they traveled; the data is matched against the outdoor advertising located along the way. The first test was done in Atlanta and this fall’s more complete testing will also be done in Atlanta for comparison purposes, Noel said.

Results of the test will be released in the first quarter of 2003, with a rollout of a system in the top 10 markets to follow. The rest will depend on the industry, agencies and advertisers.

“We can move as quickly as the industry needs us,” Noel says.