Does out of home have an ad placement problem?
Agencies and marketers are becoming increasingly concerned their ads are not appearing where they should be. While the issue is rife online, how does a medium such as outdoor stack up – and is it possible to even compare the two?
In the past 12 months, trust and transparency have established themselves at the top of marketers’ priorities with industry figures such as Procter & Gamble’s Marc Pritchard urging those client-side to educate themselves better about how, when and where their ads are appearing.
In the digital space, there has been no end to the forces impacting viewability and brand safety leading to increased scrutiny of other mediums that previously hadn’t been under the spotlight. One is out-of-home, which has become the sector to watch following a series of major mergers and acquisitions. With significant investment in recent months in building digital inventory, and associated revenues reflecting this, a greater focus on compliance in the sector comes as little surprise.
Yet many big players are adamant out-of-home is not plagued by the same issues as online. For starters, Charmaine Moldrich, CEO of the Outdoor Media Association, says outdoor doesn’t have a viewability issue, and the industry shouldn’t be using this and other digital terms when referring to its inventory. “Viewability is an online advertising metric that aims to track only impressions seen by users,” she says. “It is difficult to translate that same idea to out-of-home.”
Earlier this year, the Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA), in conjunction with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Media Federation of Australia (MFA) released the Australian Digital Advertising Practices. It defines viewability as, “The opportunity for digital advertising to be seen by a human within a recognised timeframe.”
It would seem this definition could be applied to digital out-of-home media. However, Brendon Cook, CEO of Ooh Media, suggests doing so would be retrofitting a term to a medium that existed long before the advent of digital. “People shouldn’t apply online brand safety and verification issues to out-of-home,” he argues. “It was the first medium created. The only question you should ever have with viewability is if someone builds something in front of it. It would be nice if some advertisers took a deep breath and realised there were big differences rather than strutting out buzzwords that make no sense for the medium.”
“The industry probably still hasn’t landed on a set of agreed terminologies,” admits James Diamond, managing director for Integral Ad Science (IAS), which verifies media viewability and brand safety.
The dangers of lumping out-of-home in with digital
The desire to apply online terminology to out-of-home stems from the rapid digitisation of the sector, which is like nothing we have ever seen before. “Critical mass in digital outdoor was only achieved 12 months ago,” adds Cook. “And we did it in three years. We’re moving at a much faster pace than online ever did.”
Australia, in particular, is a world leader in terms of digital inventory and the revenue it’s attracting. Given the lag in verification and compliance on the internet, it’s understandable marketers are keen to ensure they aren’t inadvertently duped by the new world of out-of-home. While the concern is warranted, wholesale adoption of digital terminology won’t fly. Take brand safety, for instance.
Cook maintains out-of-home is the original brand safe medium, because the property partners who provide the inventory have to abide by stricter rules. “For 20 years, we’ve had our systems being able to say, ‘You can’t put certain types of ads in these environments or on that location,’ right down to even a political ad where someone might vote Labor, and they say you can put political ads up here as long as it’s for Labor, not for Liberal.”
Addressing marketer’s concerns
Whatever terminology you use, marketers concerns about campaign delivery in out-of-home are genuine. From an industry position, the standard established by measurement tool MOVE for viewability is known as ‘Likelihood to See’ (LTS). It is based on each sign’s individual location and measuring the audience passing that location on an average day with the potential to see the sign.
For marketers looking to ensure their signs are being seen, several products promise to deliver reassurance. In March this year, Ooh began offering free access to the Seedooh platform for its clients. Seedoh is a third party supplier, paid for by outdoor vendors, which verifies posting or plays. “We could have built our own system and have it audited, but we decided it’d be great if the whole industry could be moving towards a system that was transparent and independent.”
Elsewhere, IAS is in the early stages of leveraging its existing technology to provide measurement in digital out-of-home with a product, currently in beta, which tracks whether an ad has played, how long it played for and its distribution throughout the day. “The concept of exposure time is becoming important in digital online and people are transferring that to the digital out-of-home space with the primary concern of how long an ad is in view for.”
Digital versus analogue
With all this focus on digital, it’s easy to forget about more traditional out-of-home inventory such as street furniture, static billboards and even posters. This inventory also requires verification. “While verification in digital out-of-home is fairly new, verification in out-of-home more generally is not new,” adds Diamond. “Companies such as Outdoor Inspection Services have been doing that for years.”
Across the ditch in New Zealand, one company knows all too well about verifying static inventory and in recent months has come up with a solution which has its Australian clients calling for a similar offer locally. That company is Phantom Billstickers which offers a unique category within the out-of-home sector.
“We have a product that doesn’t exist in Australia,” says Robin McDonnell, managing partner for Phantom Billstickers. “Framed premium street posters that appear on council approved flood-lit sites.” Already, clients such as Kit Kat and Bauer Media have booked campaigns.
To ensure transparency with its clients who often book ad space for trans-Tasman campaigns, Phantom Billstickers has developed a suite of software that handles everything from quoting to planning and fulfilment. Called PASTE, the system ensures clients know exactly when and where their posters have run through a detailed reporting system.
Digital inventory might be getting the lion’s share of attention in out-of-home, but Phantom Billstickers has opted to make the most of technology behind the scenes. “Looking at what digital means to our business, we have taken the approach and digitised the process and back end,” says McDonnell. “The true benefit in digital for us was to streamline the process.”
And Phantom Billstickers is not alone with this focus, Ooh Media’s Cook notes technology has done two things for the out of home industry. “One, it’s opening up more capabilities for clients to use the medium creatively, and two, we’ve put all this money into developing new systems to make it clear to clients what is played and when it’s played, and that’s what we’re doing.”
Independent verification
While better reporting and systems are welcomed by clients of out-of-home providers, there is, of course, concern about companies marking their own homework.
Justin Singh, CEO of Outdoor Inspection Services (OIS), says agencies and marketers are keen for verification, a service which OIS provides. “What we enable advertisers to do is to check their ads are appearing in view as they should be according to contractual agreements that guarantee a specific moment in time,” he says. “That’s what we track. It’s like an insurance policy advertisers pay for. We don’t give it away for free. The industry should welcome the fact that there is an independent third-party platform that can deliver this reassurance for advertisers.”
IAS’s Diamond says it’s ultimately up to advertisers whether they want independent verification. “Will advertisers accept a media owner solution? I doubt it,” he argues. “Most people will demand independent third-party measurement. I also think it’s better for the media owners if it’s independent as it removes any perception of bias. And for the media owners that are doing the right thing, which is the vast majority of them, having a third-party focused on measurement and verification can help eliminate some of the supply that exists that might not be good quality.
“If people are doing the wrong thing it creates excess supply in-market which drive prices down. Having a third party focused on measuring quality, enabling advertisers to buy quality, differentiates that inventory from some of the excess supply in the market. And that tends to lead to price stability.”
Despite being funded by the industry, Ooh Media’s Cook is quick to highlight the independence of Seedooh. In addition, he notes that ensuring an ad is playing out is much easier than online given the physical nature of the medium. “The client can drive down, and they can walk past them and see they’re there.”
Singh argues for an agency or advertiser booking a nationwide campaign, that’s not an option. “I’m not sure the average media buyer has any time to fly around to Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, even around Sydney and check all their signs,” he says.
In New Zealand, Phantom Billstickers’ McDonnell says third-party verification hasn’t been required to date. “Our campaigns are delivered via a real-time feed of activity that our system audits for completeness,” he says. “Our customers can self-audit their own campaigns versus booked activity.”
Clients of Phantom Billstickers receive a real-time photo feed with map coordinates of their campaign immediately upon installation. Each installation is automatically checked off in the system so the client can see in their campaign dashboard the level of fulfilment. This has been widely embraced by clients and so outside verification hasn’t been necessary although McDonnell he wouldn’t be opposed to independent verification if that was something the client could see value in.
With today’s CMOs interested in verifying their spend across channels, the number of products in-market is likely to increase in the coming months and it stands to reason an agreed terminology that sets out-of-home apart from other digital platforms will be established.
“It’s early days for the whole industry on this front,” says Diamond.
Advertisers are particularly keen for this matter to move forward as are the significant players in out-of-home who see verification and transparency as key to the ongoing success of this burgeoning medium. “We’ve always believed in doing as much as we could to clarify and give clients confidence in what we’re doing,” says Cook. “Technology’s enabled us to do that better and quicker than ever before, and that’s a positive, so we’re working hard to make sure that from a standards point of view, we’re not being compared to online because we’re far more transparent than online.”
Or, as Diamond puts it: “The whole industry’s got to move together on this one.”