IG Adscreen wants to measure

 
Market research The AdScreen operators want to test reach measurement methods this year. 
Without reach measurement, the young ad screen medium is not really getting off the ground. Until now, the industry has made do with passer-by surveys, but these have rarely been really meaningful. Until now, there has been a lack of money and will to conduct a real reach survey. Now IG Adscreen, an association of ad screen manufacturers, network operators and marketers, is stepping on the gas when it comes to market research. According to IG President Fredy Grau, Head of Business Development at IP Multimedia (Switzerland), three measurement systems have been sounded out and tests are to be carried out this year. The companies selected were Mediapulse AG, which conducts radio and TV research in Switzerland, TruMedia Technologies Inc. in Israel and the French company Quividi.
TruMedia and Quividi follow similar approaches and install mini cameras with facial recognition above the adscreens to be measured. These are able to count all the people in or passing through a specific observation area. What's more, the system can also determine the gender and (approximate) age of people who look at the camera head-on for at least one second and are therefore very likely to be paying attention to what is happening on the screen - with an error rate of just 10 to 15 percent, according to the TruMedia website.
Mediapulse, on the other hand, could use its Mediawatch panel, i.e. over 1,000 clocks from the latest generation of Radiocontrol, which are already in daily use for radio research. For ad screen market research, however, the screens would also have to be equipped with transmitters, each of which emits an individual signal that is inaudible to the human ear. However, this can be registered by the Mediawatch thanks to a built-in microphone. This makes it possible to determine whether and for how long the panelist was in the viewing room and which commercial they saw.
All these systems have advantages and disadvantages. For example, it will never be possible to equip all 4,000 or so ad screens in Switzerland with cameras or transmitters for cost reasons. In this respect, however, Mediapulse has the edge, as Mediawatch is already available in large numbers and enables year-round measurement. The separate surcharge for the broadcasters is relatively low. In addition, thanks to unisource measurement (radio, ad screen, in some cases also TV), Mediawatch enables a direct intermedia comparison.
Conversely, Trumedia and Quividi promise greater precision when it comes to calculating the chances of contact, as they determine whether a person is actually looking at the screen. Both systems also do not require the (expensive) recruitment of panelists. On the other hand, however, they raise questions about data protection. Trumedia and Quividi state that they only store anonymous data and not images. This means that passers-by cannot be identified. However, according to Fredy Grau, IG Adscreen will clarify this aspect legally before the field tests.
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