Milestone for poster planning
Outdoor Advertising: SPR+'s new planning tool could turn pricing and offers for billboard advertising on its head.
Out-of-home advertising The new planning tool from SPR+ could turn prices and offers in the poster medium on their head. For six years, Swiss poster research has been working on concepts, measuring and arguing, but now things are really getting exciting in the medium of out-of-home advertising. Last week, SPR+, Affichage's poster research company, presented its SPR+ Expert planning tool and made it available for testing purposes for the time being. For the first time, media agencies and advertising clients will be able to gain an insight into the contact opportunities of the 40,000 or so F12 and F200 street panels evaluated by APG and Clear Channel Outdoor Plakanda (CCOP) using GPS, and the SPR+ Expert tool is tailored to the special processes involved in planning the poster medium: Because poster spaces can only be occupied once per time period, agencies and clients must first obtain an availability offer from the providers in each case. With SPR+ Expert, specific offers from APG can now be digitally imported and then processed.
With the offers from CCOP, which is still working on its own poster research, this is also possible in principle, although CCOP would have to make a format change for this to work properly. According to SPR+ Managing Director Felix Mende, talks are also underway with other out-of-home advertisers such as Citylights and Starplakat. If other out-of-home advertisers join in, the poster medium could be planned across all providers in Switzerland for the first time.
However, participation would be a huge step for the sector: firstly, it would be subject to the market leader's - albeit very transparent - research system, and secondly, all participating providers would then have to go over their books. For the first time, they would receive performance data for each of their areas, which would be collected according to objective criteria and could therefore be compared with each other. It is not yet possible to predict what effect this will have on pricing and offers.
At last week's SPR+ event, Fred Dietiker from the Swiss Milk Producers described the new tool as a "milestone" for poster planning. However, he also voiced some criticism: As long as the poster spaces of market leader APG can only be booked in entire networks and not by individual sites, SPR+ Expert will at best serve to optimize poster bids and not for real planning. To which Affichage CEO Christian Kauter replied that APG would now have to analyze the figures before it could decide on any changes to the offer.
Agencies and clients can familiarize themselves with the new planning tool free of charge until the end of 2006. Graduated licenses are available for 2007. SPR+ still has to collect the last agglomerations: The data for Berne, Lucerne, Lausanne, Lugano and St. Gallen should also be available by mid-2007.
Markus Knöpfli
With the offers from CCOP, which is still working on its own poster research, this is also possible in principle, although CCOP would have to make a format change for this to work properly. According to SPR+ Managing Director Felix Mende, talks are also underway with other out-of-home advertisers such as Citylights and Starplakat. If other out-of-home advertisers join in, the poster medium could be planned across all providers in Switzerland for the first time.
However, participation would be a huge step for the sector: firstly, it would be subject to the market leader's - albeit very transparent - research system, and secondly, all participating providers would then have to go over their books. For the first time, they would receive performance data for each of their areas, which would be collected according to objective criteria and could therefore be compared with each other. It is not yet possible to predict what effect this will have on pricing and offers.
At last week's SPR+ event, Fred Dietiker from the Swiss Milk Producers described the new tool as a "milestone" for poster planning. However, he also voiced some criticism: As long as the poster spaces of market leader APG can only be booked in entire networks and not by individual sites, SPR+ Expert will at best serve to optimize poster bids and not for real planning. To which Affichage CEO Christian Kauter replied that APG would now have to analyze the figures before it could decide on any changes to the offer.
Agencies and clients can familiarize themselves with the new planning tool free of charge until the end of 2006. Graduated licenses are available for 2007. SPR+ still has to collect the last agglomerations: The data for Berne, Lucerne, Lausanne, Lugano and St. Gallen should also be available by mid-2007.
Markus Knöpfli
