DOOH measurement: outdoor advertisers unite

This unique collaboration within the industry is in response to continued global growth in digital outdoor advertising, estimated at 23 percent per year between 2007 and 2014, according to the release. In 2015, the increase is expected to be 21 percent.

As global advertisers struggle to keep up with consumer expectations for impactful and innovative campaigns, brands such as Samsung, Coca-Cola, Google and BMW are using an increasing proportion of digital out-of-home advertising in their campaigns. In response, the out-of-home advertising industry is investing in the development of a global standard for collecting digital out-of-home performance data, especially as all stakeholders understand the importance of reliable figures in factually underpinning consumers' purchasing decisions. For the first time, the advertising industry will be able to measure the clear benefits and overall performance of campaigns in this fast-growing segment and incorporate the findings into the planning of future campaigns.

That's why a working group of advertising research experts from all the companies involved has been put together and is now ready to start the project with a view to completing it in 2015. This pioneering project uses a virtual world to give consumers a realistic experience of how they encounter the various forms of digital and traditional outdoor advertising. Combined with eye-tracking methodology, this will allow the consortium to provide advertisers with accurate insights into how consumers respond to out-of-home formats of all types in a variety of different environments.

The results will be made available to OOH media performance measurement bodies around the world to enable them to view the results and decide whether they are acceptable to integrate into their national research systems. This will then allow digital and traditional outdoor advertising campaigns to be evaluated in combination.

The comment of Markus Ehrle, CEO of APG|SGA, is: "For our stakeholders and for ourselves, the exact knowledge of the performance contribution of the fast growing digital OOH segment is of central interest, because it allows us to optimize the performance of the OOH campaigns specifically to the needs of the respective customer. We firmly believe that this industry-wide research project will produce an international standard that will then augment national research systems based on existing viewability weightings, as this study will be conducted in a very scientific and transparent manner. This accountability is a key success factor and for the continued sustainable growth of the DOOH segment in the future."

Parveen Bdesha, International Research and Insight Director at Clear Channel Outdoor, explains, "By working together as an industry to develop a system for collecting performance data for digital outdoor advertising, we are helping to better unlock the potential of this medium. We're providing accurate, comparable and compelling data on targeted audiences to optimize media planning."

Details of the digital range measurement system will be provided in due course.