Outdoor Seeks Ratings Equality

NEW YORK Nielsen Outdoor today released data from its outdoor ratings service in Chicago.The data showed that outdoor, one of the fastest-growing media other than the Internet, is less cluttered, with the average adult exposed to 40 outdoor messages per day.The full results, the culmination of a three-year joint effort, were released in October to Nielsen's Global Outdoor Advisory Committee, a group of advertisers, agencies and media owners who helped design and evaluate Nielsen's GPS-based outdoor ratings service.Among all demographic groups, men 35-54 had the highest daily exposure to outdoor advertising, with 54 exposures per day. Among women, 18-34 year olds led all other female groups with 39 exposures per day. Not surprising, exposure to outdoor advertising peaks during morning and evening commutes.As outdoor advertising surges, the industry has been working to develop a ratings service that would put the outdoor medium on the same playing field with other forms of media. "For the first time in its history, the outdoor advertising industry now has a reliable people-based measurement system that delivers true reach, frequency and ratings data, complete with audience numbers and demographic breaks," said Lorraine Hadfield, managing director of Nielsen Outdoor, which hopes to expand its ratings service beyond Chicago.To measure exposure to about 12,600 outdoor panels in Chicago, Nielsen recruited a panel of 850 respondents to carry a small, pager-sized GPS device called an Npod (Nielsen personal outdoor device) for nine days. The data, which does not provide board-by-board detail, does provide persons-level demographic data that could be used in reach and frequency schedules."I find it truly refreshing that the so-called old-fashioned medium of outdoor has leapfrogged other media in stepping up to the forefront of accountability provided by modern research. We believe that this will transform the outdoor advertising industry and drive incremental dollars to the medium through increased accountability," said Jon Mandel, chairman of MediaCom. In addition to Nielsen Outdoor, owned by Adweek parent VNU, the Traffic Audit Bureau, in conjunction with its outdoor members, has been working on developing a ratings service, which could include Nielsen Outdoor's travel survey methodology as one component of an integrated ratings service. "Nielsen has released the first GPS travel survey of a market in the U.S.," noted Joe Philport, president and CEO of the TAB, which is in the process of fielding its second request for proposal to add demographic, reach and frequency data to its daily effective circulation figures. The first RFP, awarded earlier this year to GfKNOP, was to develop visibility adjustment indices, a "likely to see" measure that will be applied to each piece of outdoor inventory.—Mediaweek staff report

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Outdoor Seeks Ratings Equality

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