Coming Into Focus

Four years and $20 million in the making, the release of the outdoor industry’s first-ever ratings are only weeks away. So anticipated are the new ratings that the Traffic Audit Bureau’s Webinar on the new service held Feb. 12 attracted more than 600 users.Developed by the Traffic Audit Bureau, “Eyes On” measurement promises to be a game-changer for the business, providing the kind of ratings that allow outdoor to compete more effectively with TV and radio for advertisers’ dollars. The initial Eyes On ratings were released for some 10,000 outdoor units in Chicago. During April, Eyes On ratings will be rolled out for more than 200 markets covering ratings for about 400,000 units. Chris Gagen, Posterscope USA’s senior vp, managing director—who also sits on the TAB board’s executive committee—calls the new data “revolutionary.” He claims that OOH “is becoming the first medium that will give audience data based on the number of people seeing an ad, versus the number of people exposed to it.”The currency used to buy and sell TV and radio only measures exposure to the media. According to Joe Philport, TAB’s president and CEO, research indicates that between 30 percent and 50 percent of all people who watch TV, listen to the radio or read a newspaper, aren’t noticing the ads. The Eyes On methodology of gauging exactly how many people are noticing OOH ads, “puts the competition on the defensive,” he adds.The sharper Eyes On analytics allow users to drill down to data about one specific panel and determine its Eyes On Impression (EOI) —the number of people that actually notice it based on age, sex, income and ethnicity. The EOIs are derived by taking research on people passing by a given sign and then adjusting for the sign’s level of visibility. That added ratings dimension could add up to more dollars for outdoor. “I’m hoping it opens up a new channel for nonusers who in the past didn’t even consider outdoor because we didn’t have what they consider to be legitimate numbers on a par with other media forms,” says Jodi Senese, executive vp of marketing, CBS Outdoor.Prior to Eyes On, all the outdoor industry had to sell its inventory were the TAB’s Daily Effective Circulation figures. Because DECs were just raw counts of passersby, buyers often discounted the measure to about 20–30 percent of the DEC value. “We worked with the 18-plus demo, and everything else was a guess. If we were looking for men 18-24, we’d take the national average and apply it against DECs,” says Jack Sullivan, senior vp, OOH director for Starcom USA, who’s also chairman of TAB.While Eyes On is a huge leap forward, it presents some challenges—not the least of which is the learning curve that users need to climb in order to use EOI research to its fullest advantage. “We need to educate people, and do it quickly, especially those on the sales side,” says Judy Crisileo, a vp at Outdoor Services and a member of the Eyes On training committee. Most observers estimate that the training process will take at least a year. Another hurdle the industry will need to clear is dealing with smaller estimates. EOIs are smaller numbers than DECs, on average 40 percent to 70 percent of the DEC value, depending on the visibility of the sign. According to the TAB’s rough estimate, a 30-sheet sign draws a weekly CPM rate of $2 for adults 18-plus with the old DEC data (not including any discounting). But given the new Chicago data, the EOI CPM rate for the same sign would be roughly $3.63. Even at a higher CPM, OOH remains generally more cost effective than other media, according to the TAB’s analysis.There also may be some push-and-pull about whether some discounting still needs to occur. “The information that has been shared to date suggests that systematic discounting across the industry will not have the role it previously did,” says Jeremy O’Brien, Kinetic’s director of research and marketing. “A more nuanced perspective than this will have to wait until we are able to analyze the data in depth.”Part of the adjustment process will also involve figuring out new CPM rates for given signs as the richer data reveals their relative strength or weakness in attracting the attention of key demo and income groups. “I would anticipate that if we can make those adjustments by year’s end, it will be a very successful year,” says Philport.There’s also a glaring void that needs to be filled. As Eyes On is currently designed, digital panels are measured the same way as static boards. And there is no measurement of mobile media, such as buses, and place-based media, such as signs in airports. Philport says there is no timeline for getting those forms of ads included. “The board wants to look at Eyes On and the utility of this new information, and that will determine how they choose to invest future money. The information is so new they want time to work with it.”

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Coming Into Focus

Janet Stilson

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Janet Stilson