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Aug
11
Less Reach on Traditional OOH? VSS/PQ Says Yes OAAA Says No
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, digital ooh, metrics | Leave a Comment
As a follow up to my last post on gas prices affecting OOH performance, Mediapost has an article on exactly this topic. Apparently the OAAA issued a rebuttal to VSS and PQ Media’s report saying Reach/Frequency was down on Outdoor ads.
Apparently the OAAA claims that absolutely nothing has changed, even though consumer patterns have. Hmm…well um…okaaaay. I find that a little hard to believe but they assert that they have just as much in public transportation, subways and the like that they still get the coverage. I’d hate to be an outdoor company with just interstate oriented billboards at this point. The OAAA haven’t stated any data or support to back up their claims but as the author of the article mentiones, it’s kinda funny to see the OAAA on the defensive only a year after they happily pronounced some of their best auto traffic increases - don’tcha hate the taste of crow?
This does however support my point that DOOH in retail and place based areas should see definitive traffic pattern shifts to their benefit.
The interesting thing is VSS remains positive on OOH and has increased their forecast for the entire OOH sector to 12 Billion, double every other traditional medium
But VSS remains positive about out-of-home advertising, forecasting a cumulative annual growth rate of 10.3% through 2012. At this clip, out-of-home ad revenues should rise from $7.9 billion in 2007 to $12.9 billion in 2012. That’s more than double the projected growth rate for advertising in general, which VSS pegs at 4.3% per year through 2012.
Jul
16
Will Gas Prices be a Burden or Boon For Digital OOH
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, digital ooh, metrics | 2 Comments
Sometimes, there’s just a strange confluence of events that end up culminating in me writing about things.
My business partner, Jeff Atley, had a conversation last week with a gentleman who owns an oil field (why? I know not.). This guy mentioned in passing that gas prices could go up to $4/litre as soon as January and possibly up to $7/litre sometime in ‘09/’10. Now, the US is used to $4+/GALLON right now (which translates to about $1.30 per litre) so, to put that in perspective, that would be over $12/gallon for gas.
So I was going to write about it anyway as it has impacts on consumer patterns and therefore advertising purchase patterns, but then I saw this article on CNN, detailing the meteoric rise in Public Transit and the inability for cities to service the demand. Ridership is up huge. According to the APTA, in the first 3 months of this year…:
[Consumers] took 2.6 billion trips on public transportation during that period, an increase of 85 million more trips compared with the same period last year.
Jul
14
OAAA/AAAA DOOH “Proof of Play” Redux
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, digital ooh, metrics | Leave a Comment
Both Dave Haynes and Bill Gerba have commented on the OAAA/AAAA DOOH Report Requirements in the past but I wanted to take a brief moment and look at them myself. The original release from the AAAA is here. The reporting post centers on “Digital Billboards” but I think may be able to be scaled out a bit.
I’m amazed sometimes at how people like to reinvent the wheel when a lot of work has already been done in the standards space…sometimes to much deeper levels. Between COMB, POPAI, OVAB and others, there’s lots to choose from.
Many organizations/associations have been trying to come to terms with what a valid POP (Proof of performance) looks like over the last few years.
I’ve written in the past about how POPAI’s standards committee has assembled a full proof of performance standard spec for the industry. It’s a VERY healthy read and spec that goes into a lot of depth.
Apr
16
TAB Conference Recap
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, metrics | 5 Comments
Back in Toronto for the next 5 whole days, thoroughly exhausted after 10+ hours of travel (don’t ask) and in need of some down time but before I do that, I figured I’d let you know about the last 3 days at the TAB conference in Boca went.
All told, a great conference.. As always, a lot of that is in the networking and chatting and judging by the 2 hours of entering business cards into Outlook, I’d say it was successful for me as well. It was opened by presentations/discussions from folks like Jack Myers, Jack Sullivan and folks from Coca-Cola and Travelocity
Conference Purpose:
The conference itself was focused on TAB and it’s new “Eyes On Audience” system which tracks/prices outdoor advertising based on what they feel is a more meaningful rating approach to selling Outdoor ad space…kinda like COMBs VAI (Visibility Adjustment Index) although it goes a little deeper. I should note that this really is a rating system for Outdoor ad space and will have little impact on those that have retail or place based networks.
Outdoor is currently sold based on DECs which is basically a traffic or “circulation” count of how many people are in the area. If a sign is angled the wrong way, it still gets counted under the existing methodology.
“Eyes On” reduces the DEC (which many in the audience were not at all happy with because it means that their $s go down), although Joseph Philport, the Dr. leading the initiative, feels that it is more accurate so you can sell more on VALUE. Should be interesting to see how this one plays out although I see a scrap coming
The overview can be found here: http://www.eyesonratings.com/recent_publications.asp. I was interested to see that Erwin Ephron, someone whose work I greatly respect and the father of recency theory in advertising, also had a presentation on the link above. There’s some interesting info on Reach and Frequency in his presentation.
Workshops:
After the main intro, there were some workshops. I attended one on Digital where a panel of folks from various Networks spoke on some of the challenges in the Digital side of the business. These Included; Captivate, Zoom, CBS Outernet and Lamar…all very different business models inside Digital. They did well, although I got the distinct impression from a few conversations with folks not in the industry that they are still very lost in understanding how best to approach this space coming from the traditional side. There are a lot of moving pieces to Digital Signage and it seems to confuse some folks who are used to simply selling real estate (static boards).
Other than that, great people and worth the trip.
Now if only I could find some place to sleep…
Apr
12
TAB Launches “Eyes On” Ratings in Boca Raton
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, Event, metrics | Leave a Comment
TAB (a.k.a. The Traffic Audit Bureau for Media Measurement) is a Not-For-Profit measurement bureau dedicated to the Outdoor industry. Their mission is to standardize and regulate the circulation numbers of Out of Home media. The equivalent in Canada is COMB. COMB has long had circulation standards that advertisers accept (in varying degrees) and many of Canada’s more mature networks have been involved with them or rated by them for some time.
TAB works with advertisers, agencies and media sellers to provide standard rating and buying metrics. The idea is to go beyond the “partisan, per incident, pay as you play” approach of proving the worth of your outdoor media with one-off research reports, and get down to an audited standard that everyone recognizes. They are launching and intro’ing their new “Eyes On” Rating systems this weekend.
I’m excited about this because it’s a step towards creating a mature, audience based rating system for Outdoor that you can integrate into large, multi buy campaigns for sales purposes. Toronto’s own Kelly McGillivray from PeopleCount was involved in the development.
The conference will be in Boca Raton, Florida, starting Sunday night.
It should be an interesting conference. Lots of folks headed down. The show is hosted by Lamar’s Sean Riley and Starcom’s own Jack Sullivan.
This is getting silly but I’m writing this in Laguardia in NYC as I get on a plane to head back to Toronto, rest up and then get on a plane to go to Boca tomorrow. If you’re headed down, send me an email. I think I’m just going for the sun (it’s not nice weather in Toronto right now) but I’m told I’ll learn a lot too so that’s good :)
Mar
28
DigitalSignageToday.com: Digital Signage and the Next 5 Years
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, Mobile, Tools, metrics | 2 Comments
For those of you who missed it, Digital Signage Today just released their most recent Special Report on the next 5 years of Digital OOH.
It’s a pretty thorough publication. They’ve done a good job at trying to cover all aspects of the marketplace going over the basics and then deeper into specific verticals.
At the very end is a great collection of industry experts who go over their thoughts for the next 5 years of the industry and what to watch for. The only heads up I have to give is that I’m among them 
Have fun. Good read and well done to the folks at DSToday!
Feb
13
Ad Sales, Algorithms & Adoption
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, metrics | Leave a Comment
There was a refreshing couple of posts that I ran into recently that help to paint a picture of the lack of adoption of certain mediums by Brands and agencies and what advertising “actually is” and what it’s for - specifically speaking to online and poking at the idea that advertising shouldn’t solely be a grind down function of the most “clicks” for the cheapest price.
Arora (Chairman of Glam Media) said that “in television, once the three networks were established, the market focused on premium inventory. On the Internet, there is a lack of leverage and reach, and the power of sales forces cannot be used in the way done originally by networks and magazines.” Ninety-five percent of Web display ads, he noted, are sub-prime with costs-per-thousand under $2.
Added to that is a color commentary from a few folks that is worth re-posting, and I have done some of that below.
Jan
18
Digital Signage Advertising Model Guide
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, metrics | 1 Comment
I’m not sure how I missed this one but with all of the attention on ad models on Digital Signage lately I thought I’d bring it to the forefront for Networks who are interested in ad based Digital OOH.
Digital Signage Today has released a 47 page paper on Advertising on Digital Signage / Digital OOH entitled (whoda thunk it) “Advertising with Digital Signage”
The whitepaper was sponsored by AdFlow Networks.
I offer up as a disclaimer that I am quoted in this but fellow blogger Bill Gerba and a few others are as well.
The guide covers models, measurement info, building the network, selling tips and research. Fairly decent overview for the uninitiated and the initiated alike.
The entire whitepaper can be downloaded here.
Jan
7
Demographics, Behaviour and the Almighty Metric in Digital Signage
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, metrics | Leave a Comment
Adrian Cotterill’s recent article on measurement reminded me that I wrote an article back in December that I never got around to posting. I figured now might be a good time to get on that.
My comments and reiterations to his post are here
The metric and measurement business really is something else when you stop and take a look at it. On one hand, the agencies demand it to support and rationalize their buying decisions to the brands they service (i.e. if they are questioned on why they bought XYZ media, they can point to a study that supports the decision) while on the other hand, generally cut the numbers in half when making planning/buying decisions (i.e. if the numbers are exagerated, automatically reducing them on principle double guarantees that they made a responsible media investment)
I found a fun article on mediapost entitled “Demolish the Demo” which was so poignant I decided it might be a good conversation piece. The piece was written by Joe Mandese. Apparently, I must like this guy because usually when he writes, I have something to say about it :) I might have to meet him one of these days. Joe’s comments were surrounding TV and Google and Google’s tepid march into trying to sell traditional media and create a dashboard for advertisers to ultimately fine tune everything they do with regards to media planning and buying - especially in a way that doesn’t bastardize media, make it a commodity and sellable as remnant inventory. If you’ve read the chatter out on the net recently, you’ll know that Tim Armstrong’s recent presentation at the UBS media conference saw them shy away from saying how soon they’d be ready to attack this animal. Whether or not you believe him on their timing or not is something entirely different :)
Jan
7
Daily DOOH Measurement Post Response
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, metrics | Leave a Comment
Adrian Cotterill is an Exec in the Digital OOH space in the UK and runs a Blog called the Daily DOOH which can be found here
He had a nice little post that many will find quite interesting in helping to understand measurement for sales purposes. The post can be found here.
The highlights are basically targeted to let folks understand how much they should be spending on the audience measurement of their network relative to the spend of other media. The basic results:
