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Lorraine
Hadfield
Managing Director, Nielsen Outdoor
VNU Media Measurement & Information
Outdoor displays
are the oldest form of advertising, dating back more than
5,000 years to the ancient Babylonians. From simple signs
over the doors of early shopkeepers to today's full-motion,
digitally enhanced billboards, the medium has continued to
evolve in its quest to attract ever more eyeballs and ad dollars.
The increasing sophistication and flexibility of modern outdoor
displays have won new advertisers and led to growth for the
outdoor industry, but the medium continues to lag behind TV,
radio and print when it comes to share of advertising budgets.
In most countries, outdoor advertising accounts for less than
5% of total ad spend, with only about $17 billion committed
each year worldwide, compared with $120 billion for TV. One
major problem: the lack of a reliable, consistent, people-based
audience measurement system that provides ratings data comparable
to other media.
Over the years, a number of low-tech approaches have been
tried to address the problem. Simple traffic studies, which
estimate the number of cars that travel down a particular
highway on any given day, provide a rough measure of outdoor
audiences, but they don't report who's exposed to the ads,
or how often. Likewise, using a diary system that asks people
to recall where they've traveled relies too heavily on subjective
memory, which has been shown to be less accurate than more
scientific measures.
Now, a breakthrough service from Nielsen Outdoor is about
to solve the audience measurement conundrum and bring new
accountability to what many consider the last of the great,
unmeasured media. Relying on global positioning system (GPS)
technology to track the travel patterns of pedestrians, motorists
and other commuters in relation to known outdoor sites, Nielsen
Outdoor will provide the first electronic, people-based measurement
of outdoor audiences. This research yields true reach, frequency
and ratings data—complete with demographic breaks—comparable
to that used to measure television and radio audiences, and
will give the outdoor advertising industry a better chance
to compete for its fair share of advertising spending.
Originally developed
by the U.S. military for guidance and navigation, the global
positioning system relies on 24 satellites, each in orbit
11,000 nautical miles above the Earth, to track the position
of people or objects to within a few feet. Nielsen Outdoor
harnesses this amazing technology in a proprietary, portable
GPS meter about the size of a cell phone. The patent-pending
device—dubbed Npod™, for Nielsen Personal Outdoor
Device—has been developed jointly by Nielsen Outdoor
and RDP Associates of Seattle. Nielsen Outdoor will license
the technology from RDP.
In early 2004, Nielsen Outdoor will deploy Npod and begin
collecting data from the greater Chicago area, the first major
U.S. market to be measured. Beyond Chicago, Nielsen Outdoor
plans to roll out its service in the top U.S. and international
outdoor advertising markets. JCDecaux and Viacom Outdoor,
two leading outdoor companies, have signed on as the first
media clients for the new service, and other major industry
players—from media owners to advertising agencies and
major advertisers—are expressing strong interest.
"GPS holds the greatest promise as a methodology for
portable, passive, people-based measurement of outdoor audiences,"
said Neil Eddleston, managing director of London-based JCDecaux
WorldLink, the outdoor company's marketing and research arm.
"In its South African pilot test, Nielsen successfully
demonstrated that GPS works, and can yield the critical reach
and frequency information that will prove, once and for all,
the power of the outdoor medium for reaching consumers. We
think Nielsen brings the right blend of experience, research
capabilities and technology to this endeavor, and we're eagerly
awaiting the initial results from the introduction of Nielsen
Outdoor in Chicago."
When Nielsen, in
cooperation with the South African Advertising Research Foundation
(SAARF), tested the service in Johannesburg early this year,
more than 100 consumers were recruited for the trial, each
outfitted with a small, box-shaped GPS meter installed in
the trunk of their car. The devices recorded each respondent's
position every 20 seconds, yielding detailed travel information,
which was compared with a map of some 380 geo-coded outdoor
sites in the area, covering a variety of formats, including
bus shelters, standard posters, overhead signs (bulletins)
and grand-format signs (spectacular bulletins). When the respondent's
travel path intersected with a known outdoor display, an "intercept"
was recorded—representing an "opportunity to see"
the ad. Each of these events was dated and time-stamped, and
the direction and speed of travel noted.
To establish the
respondent's likely exposure to an advertising message, a
series of variables-known as a "visibility adjustment"-was
applied to the data. The variables, originally developed by
POSTAR in the U.K., include the respondent's speed of travel,
the angle of the display to the road, its distance from the
curb, the distance from which the display is first visible,
the complexity of the environment around the display, the
height of the display above street level, the size of the
display, and whether or not the display is illuminated or
obstructed.
"We learned
an awful lot from Nielsen's South Africa test, and we're more
convinced than ever that GPS currently offers the best potential
for realistic measurement of outdoor audiences," said
Tony Jarvis, senior vice president and director of the Strategic
Insights Group at the media-buying agency MediaCom, which
has signed up for the Chicago service. "We are briefing
our clients on all outdoor measurement initiatives, and so
far, the reaction to Nielsen Outdoor's GPS approach has been
very positive, and they're all eager to see the first results
coming out of Chicago. Nielsen Outdoor can provide a dramatic
improvement in the accountability of this medium, and that's
long overdue. We expect that advertisers will be more willing
to consider committing more money to outdoor once they actually
see the kind of target audience delivery they're getting."
Lorraine Hadfield is managing director of Nielsen Outdoor,
a new unit of VNU Media Measurement & Information dedicated
to developing and launching a global audience measurement
service for outdoor advertising. Hadfield was formerly head
of the ACNielsen and Nielsen Media Research businesses in
South Africa.
For more information about Nielsen Outdoor, contact Hadfield
at 646-654-8603 or at lorraine.hadfield@nielsenmedia.com.
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