When the Media Rating Council recently issued
finalized standards for an initial phase of out-of-home measurement dealing only with impressions-based metrics, the council received a heap of criticism from some vocal industry experts who saw it as
a step backward for the medium.
In the following Q&A, CEO and Executive Director George Ivie explains why it will ultimately lead to two steps forward, enabling out-of-home media
measurement to be both more credible as well as comparable with other major media -- something he believes will put the long undervalued ad medium on more of an even footing with the rest of the
advertising marketplace.
MediaPost: Can you explain to readers why the out-of-home standard was broken into two phases, and why the first phase had to deal
with impressions?
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George Ivie: Because we start with the lowest common denominator of measurement and we work up to more difficult and more high-value orientation in
measurement. This is an object lesson we took from digital, where we started with served impressions. Then we went to viewable impressions, clicks, audiences, and now we’ve even done outcomes
and cross-media.
We work up the chain, essentially, from lowest-value metrics -- and the widest capture -- to narrow funnels with higher-value metrics.
That’s
the way our standards-setting process works.
So with out-of-home, we started with impressions and the next step will be audience.
The goal is to create a standard,
which aligns with our other standards-setting processes, so that it interlocks with our cross-media measurement standards. That’s why we’re using terminology like impressions and
audiences.
Because even though the VAC, for example, is a very high-value metric, it’s not industry terminology if you look outside of out-of-home. It’s a good metric,
but we need to use terminology and equalize these things so that they can interlock and out-of-home can be in a cross-media buy, seamlessly.
MediaPost: There is a
parallel movement going on with attention metrics that could conceivably correlate with things like VAC. But wouldn’t it be nice if there was a common standard for attention paid?
Ivie: There is, and we’ve already started work on that. Attention in a strange way is a little bit like “viewability.” Viewability is not an end-point
metric. It has nothing to do with people, first of all. It’s about a device state.
It’s about an ad appearing on the viewable part of a browser for a certain amount of time, meeting
certain parameters, so that you can say there was an opportunity to possibly see that ad. But you don’t even know if there was a person in front of the browser. You just know that the ad
appeared and was viewable.
Attention is the same thing. Attention isn’t an end point. An end point is an outcome: Did someone like something, did someone buy something, was it
a sale, was their brand lift associated with it? Those are end points.
Attention is just another metric that gives you a better sense of whether someone is receptive to it and
whether they noticed it, etc.
Along those lines, there are two different methods of attention that we’ve been looking at.
One is what we call “proxy
measure of attention.” A proxy measure of attention is not direct, but it’s gathering information around the context of the ad to increase the likelihood that somebody paid attention. Were
they hitting keystrokes? Were they moving the cursor? Did they click on something? Did they minimize something or maximize something? These are passive signals that give you a couple of things: 1) Is
the user there; and 2) were they active during the ad play?
MediaPost: So heuristics?
Ivie: Yes, they’re heuristics.
They’re not attention, but they’re proxy measures that increase your confidence that there is possible attention. And in our outcomes measurement standard, we’ve got a lot about that
already, because we can measure that. We already have standards in tech that can measure that. And we already have a vendor – DoubleVerify – that has that kind of a proxy metric accredited
by us.
Then there is another type that I would call more direct measures of attention. Things like biometric measures: eye-tracking, facial coding, galvanic skin response, brain
waves, etc. MRC has written a tiny bit about that in our standards, but we really haven’t made an effort to standardize that side, because we’re still learning more about it ourselves. We
don’t set standards if we don’t know enough about something. It’s something we’re undertaking and I’m not ashamed to admit it, but it’s something we need to spend
more time with.
But there are two sides to attention metrics and both of these sides have a problem.
The problem with the heuristics side is that it’s not an
actual measurement of attention. You can assemble all the heuristics you want and you won’t know if someone is paying attention. It’s only a likelihood of attention.
The
direct measures side is not scalable and it’s expensive. You can measure a small group of people as to what their brainwaves were, but you can’t measure an entire campaign. It’s not
something you can measure at a wide scale.
They both have issues. What we think the industry is going to migrate to, is hybrid methods between these two, in which I somehow use the
proxy metric to understand what types of proxy metrics are usually there when there is attention from the direct measures. Then I can project.
MediaPost: It’s
like a calibration panel?
Ivie: Yes. We think that might be an evolution for attention measures. And there are vendors out there doing things like that.
They’re doing very clever stuff, combining some of these approaches. We think that probably is the thing that has legs.
We’re probably going to codify more of the direct
measures and this hybrid approach, but we haven’t done that yet.
MediaPost: I didn’t mean to digress into attention metrics, but wanted to understand if
other media might someday elevant to the standard out-of-home had with likelihood-to-see.
Ivie: Yes. I think it’s very likely that we will be elevating it. And
we’ve already started that process by pushing more people towards audience measurement and likelihood-to-see across other media types, particularly in digital.
MediaPost: So what is out-of-home’s next phase roadmap and timeframe like?
Ivie: We’re looking to start the project within two
weeks and start having meetings. The good news is we’ve already written audience measurement standards in other media types. And I’m not going to name names, but there already are vendors
who have reasonable audience measurement out-of-home structures.
Combining that means we essentially already have a roadmap. We have some things in the MRC staff’s minds, but
we need to write it and put it in front of the committees to seek general agreement. And I’m not going to underestimate that timeframe, because in the out-of-home space, getting general
agreement is really difficult. On a scale of 1 to 10 difficulty, it’s like an 8.5. It’s really hard. A lot of people in the out-of-home industry don’t agree on some of these
approaches. That’s why the first phase took five years. The second phase will be a lot quicker than that.
MediaPost: Conceivably, how soon could you have a
draft of that?
Ivie: A year.
MediaPost: Well, I do think there’s a lot of emotion in the out-of-home industry, because it
has long veen and under-valued medium. And it’s been largely under-valued, because of the metrics.
Ivie: We have some issues to solve. People can say
out-of-home has great metrics, but the problem is they are isolated metrics. We want to solve that problem. And not do harm to the good stuff.
MediaPost: Last
question. Like all other media – especially digital – new technologies are rapidly changing the way we define them. That true of out-of-home too when you think about things like augmented
reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, projected holograms at some point. You can have QR codes on a static billboard that launch a multi-dimensional experience. Is that going to create new issues
for standardizing out-of-home measurement, because what is even out-of-home media in that context?
Ivie: We’re on the tail of just having issued augmented
reality standards with the IAB and also completely updating our in-game standards. So we’ve been working on that.
The hardest issue is classification. Would you call all of
these things “out-of-home?” Those lines are getting very blurry to me. At MRC we have committees to deal with each medium. We have a TV committee, a radio committee, out-of-home, print,
data quality, and an international committee. The problem is, sometimes when we get audits we have trouble figuring out what committee it goes into. So we end up combining comitttees.
I think it’s the same issue the broader industry is having, which is, “What do you call this stuff?” The key issue is do you measure it well, which is why we always break
things down and have the same approach: what are the lowest common denominators and how do we codify that. And then we build up to higher and higher metrics.
It doesn’t matter
if it’s augmented reality or out-of-home.