MOVE goes live, resetting how out of home is measured

Australia’s out of home industry has gone live with a new single measurement currency, with the Outdoor Media Association’s MOVE system launching today 9 March.

The rollout marks a structural shift in how OOH campaigns are planned, bought and reported, replacing the long-running MOVE1.5 framework with what the OMA describes as a fundamentally different measurement model. 

OMA chief executive Elizabeth McIntyre positioned MOVE as the industry’s unified standard, spanning every major format across metro and regional markets.

“For a lot of our members this will be a moment where they are united representing all formats. So that’s the most exciting thing,” McIntyre said.

Unlike its predecessor, MOVE is not an update but an entirely rebuilt system, reflecting changes in available datasets, modelling techniques and audience behaviour. “It’s not an update to MOVE1.5. It’s a completely different measurement system,” McIntyre said.

At the core of MOVE is a shift from traditional “opportunity to see” assumptions to a “realistic opportunity to see” (ROTS) model, aligning Australia with emerging global best practice in outdoor measurement.

Historically, OOH measurement assumed broad visibility, effectively counting everyone within range of a sign. MOVE introduces filters accounting for illumination, sign size, positioning, direction and physical obstructions.

“We’re calculating the realistic opportunity that people are going to see the sign,” McIntyre said.

The system also applies a visibility-adjusted contacts layer, using eye-tracking inputs to refine how many people are likely to have genuinely viewed an asset. The result, McIntyre argued, is a far more granular understanding of audience exposure.

“It’s going to give you a much better result of the granularity of who’s seen what signs at what time of the day.”

Granularity is a recurring theme throughout MOVE’s design. The platform moves from modelling an “average week” to reporting actual weekly audience data across a full 52-week cycle, capturing seasonal variation, public holidays and school holidays.

MOVE1.5 relied on a typical-week construct covering 112 demographic profiles. MOVE expands this to more than 180 demographic segments, including residents, domestic travellers and international visitors.

“We’re measuring audiences 365 days of the year with hourly data that’s seasonally adjusted,” McIntyre said.

The scale of the underlying dataset is substantial. MOVE incorporates more than 400 billion rows of data modelling movement, behaviour and contacts across approximately 150,000 signs nationwide, including 48,000 regional assets.

The system maps more than seven million road links, one million points of interest, nearly 90,000 public transport stops, 35 airports and more than 1,300 indoor locations.

Regional measurement has been significantly expanded, with 7,842 bus panels now captured outside metro markets.

“Nearly a third of all our signs are regional,” McIntyre said.

MOVE also introduces deeper coverage of place-based environments, extending measurement beyond roadside and transit into locations such as cafes, gyms and office buildings.

For outdoor players with large indoor portfolios, that expansion materially changes the measurement landscape.

“What MOVE really does is complete the understanding of how people move around cities every day,” Paul Butler, managing director at VMO, said. “For us, half our assets haven’t previously been part of MOVE. Now we’re getting a complete picture of audiences.”

Airports represent another area of increased sophistication. MOVE tracks audience movement beyond security zones, analysing how travellers navigate terminals, dwell times and lounge usage patterns, insights McIntyre said were generating strong interest.

“No one else is doing that, and it’s really insightful. The airports are excited about that.”

While MOVE enhances measurement precision, the OMA was clear about what the system does not attempt to capture.

It does not directly measure ad recall or purchase intent, focusing instead on movement, visibility and trip purpose.

Beyond accountability, agencies at the preview suggested MOVE could reshape creative decision-making.

Greater confidence in audience data across formats and environments may encourage broader experimentation, particularly across regional markets and non-traditional OOH placements.

McIntyre argued that improved measurement ultimately benefits both planning and creative execution.

“Out of home campaigns haven’t changed,” she said. “But how we measure them has fundamentally changed.”

MOVE’s models have undergone 491 acceptance tests prior to launch, designed to validate accuracy and robustness.

Following rollout, the OMA will work with the Media Federation of Australia to refine future enhancements, including deeper data granularity and API integration. For the OOH sector, the stakes extend beyond measurement mechanics.

With media buyers under increasing pressure to justify effectiveness, MOVE positions outdoor advertising alongside other channels operating with unified currencies. And, as McIntyre framed it, that parity is central to the industry’s next phase.

“We are the strongest and fastest-reaching medium delivering scale at pace.”