Out-of-home advertising on U.S. public transport networks should be boosted by the adoption of a national standard for audience measurement, as Barnaby Page reports.
A study conducted by Canadian audience research firm Peoplecount for the Transportation Research Board, a U.S. nonprofit body, found that advertising agencies want better metrics and more precise targeting for their campaigns. It covered ads inside and outside buses and trains as well as at stations, and provided a raft of recommendations for a national metrics scheme.
And now the Traffic Audit Bureau (TAB) has been appointed to co-ordinate such a scheme. It will be based on the Out of Home Ratings system from TAB, previously known as Eyes On, which measures not only the number of people potentially exposed to each advertising site, but also the probability that they will actually notice an ad – determined by applying a Visibility Adjustment Index (VAI) calculated from eye-tracking tests.
Data from top ten markets is expected to be available shortly, with others to follow.
Currently, transit inventory is sold for around $1bn annually, delivering about half of that sum to transit operators. But although media buyers do “choose transit advertising for the mass reach, lack of traditional outdoor in the area and ability to target geographically or demographically”, the Peoplecount researchers found that they are are unhappy with the accuracy of audience measurement, desire better demographic and geographic targeting abilities, and in particular would like to see Out of Home Ratings used.
With improved audience metrics, preferably compatible with existing media planning software such as that from Arbitron, IMS, Nielsen or Telmar so that transit can easily be compared with other media in general and alternative out-of-home media in particular, planners would be likely to recommend more use of transit media, they said.
They just won’t listen
Troublingly, however, sellers of transit media did not appear to understand planners’ problems. They believed that “lack of knowledge or familiarity with the medium” were the main obstacles to developing business, and actively preferred not to allow planners to select particular locations for their ads, wanting instead to make mass sales across a whole transit system.
And, the report warned, the data that is currently supplied may often be unreliable: “Because there is no prevailing method many sales organisations resort to ‘guesstimating’ audience exposures for premium route vehicles such as historic vehicles, tourist lines, etc. Impressions are often extrapolated from circulation data at fixed points on the route, or other available sources. Unfortunately none of these methods follow an accepted protocol and accuracy varies widely.
“The outdoor advertising industry (through TAB) has been rigorous about audit compliance and requires each display to be certified. There is no comparable audience measurement certification for bus or rail media, so even if the data are from independent third-party sources, it appears to be self- reported, thereby diminishing its value as an accepted currency.”
The implementation of the new national standard should address that problem. But it also emerges from the Peoplecount report that producing reliable transit metrics is no small task.
The researchers identified the problems faced by schemes in a number of other countries – Australia, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.
The process of gathering accurate, usable data is a “huge challenge”, they concluded, and particular attention needs to be given to understanding the paths that passengers take through a transit system in order to assess the value of individual advertising locations. Like the U.S. media planners, the foreign audience measurement schemes also recognised the importance of developing a system that can compare transit with other out-of-home media.
It will be important to get as many transit systems as possible to participate in the new metrics programme as it is rolled out over a one-to-three-year period, according to the report’s authors, who suggested that when appointing sales houses the transit operators should stipulate that the new audience measurement system must be used.
Digitally complicated
As well as the Out of Home Audience Ratings which will form the basis of the new metrics, the measurement guidelines from the Digital Place-Based Advertising Association (DPAA) were also recognised as appropriate for “digital displays in closed systems such as bus and train interiors and bus or train stations”, although the researchers noted that the guidelines don’t specify in detail how measurements should be made.
But where digital signage is concerned, measurement may be even more complicated than for static signage, although that may also promote its benefits.
The researchers pointed out that not only would the duration of each advertisement in a playlist have to be considered, but also – in the case of displays visible from outside the vehicle – both its average speed and that of passing cars, factors affecting the duration of a screen’s actual visibility. “Given the number of potential variables and the relative rarity of this type of digital signage, it would be best to customise these calculations for each particular transit system’s exterior mobile digital signage installations,” the researchers advised.
They also suggested that although most “basic in-station posters” could be treated as identical within a given station, more differentiation might be necessary at “very large and complex stations”. This implies that giant concourse screens at major terminals, for example, could require individual measurement – almost certainly underlining their attention-grabbing capability.
High-profile digital installations covered by the new metrics are likely to include CBS Outdoor’s displays on the Atlanta subway, Titan’s in Philadelphia, and the bus-borne digital signage that Titan operates in Chicago – where the same company is now also adding screens to subway stations under a new contract – as well as station screens from a range of major outdoor players.
www.dp-aa.org
www.eyesonratings.com
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Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Something all of OOH should work toward | From ScreenMediaMag.com: New metrics will bring transit into advertising mainstream
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