Solving Out of Home’s 10 Piece Puzzle

Over the years, my family vacations have always included a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. We’d lay out the pieces on a table and come together to “solve” the puzzle. In many ways, it reminds me of my role at TAB. Every day, we face an intricate puzzle – that of building a strong and viable measurement system for the outdoor industry. I arrive at my office and gather around the conference table to collaborate with advertisers, agencies, media and research companies to devise new solutions. The strides made have been significant and we invite you to check TAB’s website to keep abreast of both current and future initiatives.

Here are the 10 pieces as I see them:

1. Out of home is unique and we need to build a system that addresses its particular characteristics. We shouldn’t build a system that simply treats outdoor like other media. Our system must provide measures that show the medium’s key assets.
    
2. Geographic dispersion and proximity are critical. While demographics are important, it is more important that advertisers and their agencies understand the medium’s ability to focus “weight” into key locations within a DMA.
    
3. In out of home, the advertising is the medium. In TV we measure the audiences of programs and dayparts. However in out of home the advertising is the content ... the only content. We can’t leave creative out of the mix since it’s intricately connected to the viewer’s response. It must be considered and advertisers must learn to appreciate the powerful draw of great creative.
    
4. The audiences of out of home media are more stable those of than other media. Traffic patterns don’t change significantly over time as they do with the debut of a new TV program. We don’t need frequent ratings reports like television.. Annual or seasonal reporting should be more than adequate.
    
5. GPS is not the answer, but it can be a valuable tool. We shouldn’t look at GPS in isolation. It can’t provide stable data without very large and unaffordable samples. But GPS can be an important part of a rich integrated system of measurement.
    
6. We are fortunate in the U.S. to have traffic counts as a foundation for our measurement. In most major countries that have independent traffic counts, the counts are now being used as the foundation their measurement systems. This provides large sample, high quality data at relatively low cost.
    
7. Out of home is leading other media in the move from “opportunity to see” to “likely to see” measures of audience. Advertisers are watching and they are impressed. The use of a VAI system to report persons actually seeing outdoor ads will finally produce numbers that Advertisers can use in their accountability and ROI models. This puts us not only in the mix but ahead of other media.
    
8. Large and small markets require the same measures of audience. We can’t have “Have and Have Not” markets. While small markets can’t afford GPS measurement, they have traffic counts and thus can have VAI adjustments since we will be able to model demographics and reach/frequency into all markets using this solid foundation.
    
9. Innovation in out of home measurement is happening around the world. We have a lot to gain from what other countries have learned, but for the first time in many years, we are on the leading edge. We have many options.
    
10. Change is happening around us and we are learning on a day by day basis. Our approach must remain flexible. The measurement model we design needs to integrate new learning and improved tools as they become available.

Well, that’s our measurement puzzle. I look forward to working closely with all of you to put the pieces together.

Joe Philport
President and CEO
The Traffic Audit Bureau for Media Measurement, Inc.

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