Out of Home Audience Measurement

Out of home (OOH) media consist of advertising frames ranging from large roadside billboards to small bus shelter panels. They also include advertising boards posted at bus and train stations, in car parks, on taxis and bus sides, and panels inside shopping malls. We help companies buying and selling advertising space on these media to gauge the size and composition of the estimated audience exposed to the advertising featured on them. The data we collect feeds into decisions on the best placements for advertising frames and are also used for trading advertising inventory between buyers and sellers.

The growth in importance of digital Out of Home panels has necessitated a new focus on accurate, time-based measurement.

The exact method generally consists of five main components:

1. An Inventory Management System, where details of each frame to be measured are stored.
2. A Travel Survey, where the journeys people make outside their homes are tracked in detail.
3. A Traffic Intensity Model which captures details of traffic and pedestrian flows from a range of sources.
4. Visibility Adjustment, where the relative impact of different types of posters can be assessed and integrated into the measurement results.
5. A Data Delivery System which delivers data to end-users.

Various options are available for each of these components. Our Gold Standard approach (deployed in several countries including the UK and France) uses a bespoke Multi-Sensor Tracking (MST) Meter carried by a representative sample of people over a two-week period. This enables us to track their locations second-by-second, within a one-meter radius of tolerance – giving us a precise read on when and how long they are within sight of particular poster panels in both indoor and outdoor environments.

Lower cost approaches utilising app data are also available meaning we can implement our measurement tools and offer reliable insights irrespective of a country’s technological and travel infrastructure.