Update: Industry lauds new OOH currency

Industry experts lauded the new OOH measurement currency which is to be launched soon but added that just an annual survey may not be enough.In an announcement yesterday, four of Singapore's largest outdoor media companies commissioned Nielsen to provide outdoor audience measurement for three years.Clear Channel Singapore, MediaCorp OOH Media, Moove Media and SMRT have tasked Nielsen to track the out-of-home (OOH) "on the go" media consumption patterns of consumers through personal interviews.Media agencies, Marketing spoke to said they will have to work closely with Nielsen, in the beginning, to ensure they understand any nuances in the data and use it properly in the planning process."One of the challenges is the outdoor scene is very progressive and ever changing which means an annual survey may not be able to capture most current trends," Leela Nair, managing director of Mindshare, said."We welcome the move for better industry measurement. At Mindshare we believe data is the new black and it will serve to provide more robust planning and comparisons for our clients," she added.Irene Revilla, SVP strategic development Posterscope China said providing OOH measurement tools to our clients and partnersis a priority if we want the medium to develop."OCS China is the first of its kind in such a challenging and fragmented market, we believe this study will contribute greatly to the growth and the rationalisation of the medium."(OCS is Posterscope's OOH survey, the purpose of which is to understand the attitudes and behaviours of consumers while they are out of home.)This new metric system will allow OOH sector to work within a common ‘currency' with which with advertising can be traded, enabling ad agencies and advertisers to measure the return on investment for outdoor campaigns and provide marketers with insights on the effectiveness of the medium.As part of the new currency, travel journeys of the consumers will be visually tracked via software which generates geographical coordinates and pinpoints consumers' locations at different time intervals. Trips will be mapped out to show which outdoor sites the consumers passed by and whether they had a chance to see the ads.Nielsen estimates that marketers spent US$187.6 million in outdoor advertising in 2011, up 29% compared to five years ago. For the first six months of 2012, outdoor advertising spend in Singapore was US$106.4 million."Out-of-home is an important component in any companies' total advertising mix," Rebecca Tan, MD, Media Industry Group (Singapore and Malaysia) at Nielsen, said."Until recently, the lack of a common set of trusted metrics on the effectiveness of this media posed a challenge to marketers in Singapore as they could not have any visibility into the effectiveness of advertising via this media."Here's what the OOH industry players had to say: "Audience measurement is a hygiene factor that all media should deliver. The fact that in Singapore Out-of-Home this will soon be a reality is extremely exciting. Not only will it allow us to fully demonstrate the value that our medium offers, it will also allow us to compete even more effectively with other media, prove our true worth in any media plan and, if other global markets are anything to go by - increase our market share."- Adam Butterworth, chief executive officer, Clear Channel Singapore"For the first time in Singapore, Moove Media , together with the other outdoor players, is able to pioneer out-of-home's first audience measurement system with accurate and measurable data through reach and frequency across all our formats. This audience measurement program now offers agencies and clients to a unified and simple solution when planning and buying allowing all to better evaluate the effectiveness of Out-of-Home campaigns."- Jayne Kwek, chief executive officer, Moove Media"We believe an industry currency is the way forward for the OOH advertising sector. It allows media owners further insights into their business, and offers more robustness in media planning. More importantly, our participation builds on our efforts to afford greater accountability and visibility to our clients and business partners, for their marketing investment."- Dawn Low, managing director, SMRT Commercial Business"I think it is important that MediaCorp can provide a study on the ROI of OOH mediums, as it will be useful to advertisers like us who are constantly facing the challenge on how we can maximize our advertising spent effectively."- Ong Fen Fen, marketing specialist, Transitions Optical