Although many pieces of research trying to present an integrated metric and framework for measuring the effectiveness of out-of-home media known as OOH, a universal framework which could be a measurement in a quantitative manner hasn’t been introduced yet. To solve the problem and give a better insight into the buying procedure, many organization such as OAAA (The Outdoor Advertising Association of America) introduce platforms that give you kinds of data helping you measure and quantify your media effectiveness.
Listed below there are platforms that many media agencies or media buyers around the world have found them useful once they decided to start a new OOH campaign. It’s important to know that the basis of such information is survey-based and these data have been collected in a statistical way.
1. Experian Simmons Market Research Bureau conducts research annually for the Institute of Outdoor Advertising, providing demographic data, exposures, and the like. GfK, Mediamark Research & Intelligence (MRI) provides similar data. You can know about the former at their website. In their site below the “about us” menu you can read about them:
”Simmons Market Research conducts high-quality national research studies with over 25,000 consumers annually. Every year, tens of thousands of households participate in the National Consumer Survey, which gathers information on the lifestyles, media habits, and product/brand preferences of American families.”
2. On the other side, GfK MRI (Gfk MRI website) conducts researches focusing on TV and magazine and reports demographic, psychographic, media usage and consumers behavior primarily in the United States market.
Point of Purchase Advertising International is a trade organization of point-of-purchase advertisers collecting statistical and other market information on POP advertising. This type could be useful in arranging POP (POS-Point of Sale) programs known as BTL campaigns. You could see reports and business insights here.
3. The Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA) is the primary trade association of the industry. It assists members with research, creative ideas, and more effective use of the medium and has a website. Here you can read about OAAA that:
“Comprised of 800+ member media companies, advertisers, agencies, ad-tech providers, and suppliers that represent over 90 percent of the industry, OAAA is a unified voice, an authoritative thought leader, and a passionate advocate that protects, unites, and advances OOH advertising in the United States.”
One of the cornerstone metrics you can find that recommended by OAAA is Geopath’s Audience Measurement Ratings that currently provides its member with demographic-specific impressions, rating points, and reach & frequency measures for over a million pieces of OOH inventory. These data generally have been collected by analyzing traffic and traveling data but the problem is that this data doesn’t include customer behaviors in Iran so all media agencies in Iran have their own measuring tools and they’ll act in their own way once their clients need post-campaign delivery analysis.
4. The Traffic Audit Bureau (TAB) is the auditing arm of the transit industry. TAB conducts traffic counts on which the published rates are based. Actually, this is the old name of Geopath and in 2016 they’ve changed their name to Geopath.
5. The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) provides ridership statistics, studies, and other transit usage information. This would be helpful in planning for transit OOH campaigns (Ex. Bus wrapping, subway advertising, and so on) running in the United States.
6. The last organization that is an expert in market research and like other organizations that mentioned above has conducted researches and provides guidelines for out-of-home audience measurement is Esomar. Esomar have introduced a guideline which allows media agencies to measure their audiences in a consistent and realistic way, these metrics include OTC (opportunity to contact), VAC (visibility adjusted contact), and so on that have been described in detail in the “Global Guidelines on Out-of-Home Audience Measurement” released by Esomar.
At Armani Media Agency we have had to find our way, we use all the data that we have at hand included traffic data (exclusively for Tehran), Google API and Waze data. Tehran Traffic Control data are collected from traffic cameras and by means of such data we are able to realize the most congested roads, as well as the number of vehicles, have been commuting in each route in average.
Figure 1-How the data are gathered to shape a Heat-Map
The data have been collected from the Tehran Traffic Control are to be merged with those which are explored via Google and Waze as well as descriptive observational data. The outcome of the entire process will be a diagram called Heat-Map and this map gives us the ability to show our customers the best places that will be invaluable to their campaign goals and budget. Below figure shows a Heat-Map sample, the more reddish is the route, the more traffic and the audience is there.
The orange dots are called Hot-Spots illustrating the strategic places. The message will cover the most segments as it’s possible if a brand communicates its own message in such places. That media cost in Hot-Spots is higher than in any other places is obvious but the decision has to be made by a trade-off between budget, the reach of the campaign and so on.
Figure 2- Heat-Map of Tehran by Armani Media Agency
In conclusion, you have to know that many organizations are conducting researches to provide their community information about the effectiveness of their media when the community which is media agencies and in some cases media buyers, have to report a post-campaign analysis to their clients. But in Iran, we don’t have such analytical data so the media agencies have to find their own measuring way. In this blog, we’ve described the way that Armani Media Agency have found and the outcome of that way is a diagram called Heat-Map. Having a practical tool in hand such as Heat-Map, you could guide your clients to place their message wherever the desired campaign GRP, Reach, and Frequency might get by the less cost that’s possible.
For further reading and filling your learning enthusiasm about OOH media and advertising follow us at Armani LinkedIn and Instagram page.
