January 25, 2023
Commentary
Does The OOH Industry Want To Have A Say In Its Future?
- by David Gordon , Op-Ed Contributor, November 10, 2021
Rapid and accurate audience measurement is the gold standard of accountability for any medium or media owner -- but how possible is it?
One of the reasons for the seemingly irresistible surge of digital is the rapidity of its measurement, essentially in real-time. One might quibble about its accuracy in …
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Very true, David. However only recently we have seen a great leap backward in "audience" measurement with a return to "raw" traffic counts---which give bigger but not better numbers---replacing estimates based on eyes-on-poster ---which give smaller but better numbers. Also, the various OOH venues are very fragmented in their approach to research and "audience" definitions. We have placed-based ad sellers, movie theater sellers, 30-sheet poster sellers, etc. Some of these do pretty good research---because their advertisers demand it---- but many get away with murder---or try to----and some simply don't supply anything of value to define their audiences and whether they even see the ads. Without advertiser and agency participation in any deliberations that might lead to meaningful audience and ad exposure or impact research, the various OOH sellers will probably continue to go for the big---but unblievable--- numbers. This, in turn, will leave OOH way behind other media options ---or completely out of the picture---for many advertisers.
Ed I agree that traffic counts are "the big number", but they are the bedrock of OOH measurement.
Back in the billboard/poster days, it was OK to use the traffic count as the OTS (Opportunity To See) but it was essential that the LTS (Likelihood To See) be applied for each billboard. So if 100,000 people passed a sign (OTS) but only one-third actually looked at the sign (LTS), then OTS * LTS is a fit-for-purpose estimate of viewership. As a corollary, viewership of static postings can NOT exceed the traffic count.
Now that we are in the digital age, we need to take into account that digital signs rotate - maybe six ads in a pod. The important thing is the time-spent in the cone-of-vision. In a vehicle that will (usually) be relatively short compared to a pedestrian. This means that a passer-by may see more than one ad (and probably will, dependent on posting duration). They mightn't see the entirety of ad exposures, so we have to derive a probabalistic model that apportions the passers-by to the digital rotations. The associated corollary is that viewership of digital rotation posting will VALIDLY exceed the passing traffic count.