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Audience metrics: our top eight trends to watch (0)

 

1. First and most importantly: don’t expect measurement to drift away as an issue. While some digital-signage networks are getting by nicely with few and crude metrics, for the sector as a whole the absence of a clear, standardised, reliable system of audience measurement is the single biggest barrier to going mainstream and gaining the trust of brands and ad agencies.

2. Expect the ultimate solutions to come from pan-industry bodies and very likely from organisations outside this sector, rather than from specialist screen-media metrics firms. Why? The answer’s simple: a means of comparing OOH screen metrics with those for other media is what the agencies really need, and bespoke measurement methods that can only be applied to screen media don’t provide that. Clever though many of them are, they’re likely to end up as useful adjuncts rather than the main methods of measurement.

3. Leaders will emerge. In the UK, look to Postar – the measurement organisation that already covers non-digital out-of-home – and researchers Ipsos MORI to provide the basic currency of screen-media measurement. But don’t hold your breath: it’s unlikely to be firmed up before the end of the decade. Organisations from the sector such as POPAIdigital and The Screen will have significant input.

In the States, meanwhile, the Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau (OVAB) is leading the way, with heavyweight support from an assembly of big screen-media players and other media firms – including, crucially, the measurement firms ACNielsen and Arbitron. Earlier this year, Nielsen committed to start providing ratings for networks including IdeaCast and Gas Station TV, while Arbitron’s Portable People Meter, devised for radio, can be applied to out-of-home too.

4. Accept that once the dust has settled on the great quest for metrics – around 2011, perhaps? – it’s very likely that there will be different methods for different kinds of screen media. After all, does it make much sense to measure a digital billboard in the same way as a salon chair-side screen? Content, dwell time, the mood of the audience and the trade-off between high numbers and high quality are dramatically different. Many in the sector argue that it’s a motley bag of rather disparate media lumped together under the heading “digital OOH”, and the development of metrics is likely to prove them right.

5. Don’t expect an international solution. Other media are measured in different ways around the world, and media planning and buying are largely done on a per-territory basis, so there’s not much precedent or incentive for an international metric. One possible exception comes from the world of in-store TV, though: Nielsen In-Store and the In-Store Marketing Institute (ISMI) have been working on PRISM (Pioneering Research for an In-Store Metric), which could provide a measurement standard for all in-store media on both sides of the Atlantic.

6. Look out for more technology innovation. The measurement accessory du jour is the camera, used by companies like Japan’s NEC, France’s QuiVidi, Canada’s Xuuk and Israel’s TruMedia. Some are combining it with face-recognition technology to enable truly accurate measurement of exactly how many people viewed a given screen and for how long, as well as making a stab at their age and gender.

But while such  high-tech measurement methods will undoubtedly prove useful in some applications – for example, validating short-term digital-signage installations, or testing potential screen venues – we don’t believe they’ll become the standard. In the end, brands and agencies will prefer metrics that can be easily applied to any network, without complex extra equipment at the site.

Meanwhile, pocket-sized devices like Arbitron’s Portable People Meter and Nielsen Outdoor’s Nielsen Personal Outdoor Device – which uses GPS to track the movements of a sample group of consumers and establish which advertising sites they have encountered – are likely to provide much of the basic data necessary for understanding trip patterns, while controlled experiments with gaze-tracking systems will make clear how consumers interact with advertising on a moment-by-moment basis.

In retail, ever-tighter integration of screen-media networks with POS and – eventually – RFID systems will lead to increasingly solid numbers on sales uplift.

7. Expect a growing emphasis on qualitative and behavioural aspects of the consumer, as well as audience numbers and demographics. (See the report we published today.) This will be especially true in the UK supermarkets sector, hugely competitive and able to fund the chunky research needed.

8. Don’t expect to attend many presentations on screen-media measurement without hearing references to (a) Google entering the market and (b) Minority Report coming true. Our money’s on (a) happening first, though if Google is eyeing this sector, it’s more likely to come in with an integrated local-advertising offer that combines online, newspapers, broadcast and outdoor than just with a measurement system. 

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