The first national, industry-wide audience measurement planning tool for outdoor media in Australia has been launched at a breakfast briefing in Sydney attended by close to 300 members of the media and advertising industry.
MOVE, which stands for Measurement of Outdoor Visibility and Exposure, is also a world first in that it covers all major formats and environments, including roadside billboards, posters, street furniture, railway stations, transit, shopping centres and airports.
MOVE introduces a new and more accurate audience measurement currency – Likelihood To See (LTS) – meaning only those people who in all probability will see an outdoor advertising face will be included in the results. Most other media base their results on all people who have the ‘opportunity’ to see regardless of whether they actually do or not.
The five major outdoor media companies, APN Outdoor, EYE, Adshel, JCDecaux and oOh!media, along with the Outdoor Media Association (OMA), provided $10 million equity and resources to develop the system over three years. A grant of $830,000 from the Federal Government’s Industry Co-operative Innovation Program (ICIP) was also awarded.
Key features of the MOVE system include:
• Outdoor media inventory measured across the five markets of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth (same Primary Coverage Areas as OzTAM television ratings).
• A cross-format planning tool that will produce audience measurement results for any combination of formats and/or markets against more than 110 demographics.
• A comprehensive data base comprising:
- Site characteristics of 60,000 advertising faces across the four categories of Roadside – billboards; Roadside – other; Transport and Retail/Lifestyle.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics Census population statistics.
- Travel information of 600,000 individual person trips sourced from 68,000 Government Household Travel Surveys.
- Land use information of each market – schools, shopping centres, workplaces, etc.
- Road, public transport and pedestrian networks of each of the five markets.
- Survey results of 15,000 respondents used to determine movement within airports and shopping centres, as well as trip variability over time.
- Eye tracking studies covering 15 years global research.
• Data stored on a cluster of 32 computers from which audience measurement results are generated.
• Mapping technology to clearly show geographic distribution of outdoor media campaigns.
The MOVE system was built by a consortium of Australian and international research leaders, headed by the Brisbane-based transport and traffic modellers, Veitch Lister Consulting (VLC). Simon Cooper, the architect of the United Kingdom’s successful POSTAR outdoor audience measurement system, was also a key participant.
MOVE Chairman Steve O’Connor said the system would greatly simplify the task of planning and buying outdoor media. “The outdoor media industry has taken a giant leap forward today by delivering upon its promise to provide a fully transparent and accountable audience measurement tool that will be directly available to media agencies, advertisers and OMA members,” Mr O’Connor said.
“Users of the system will need to enter Access Agreements with MOVE which will be provided free-of-charge to media agencies until 1 September 2010 after which a payment system will be introduced to cover new outdoor media contracts.”
Mr O’Connor said any funding from external users of the system would be limited to recovering some of MOVE’s administrative costs, including third party items such as mapping and training services. He said the industry would cover all costs associated with system updates and enhancements.
Mr O’Connor paid particular tribute to the VIEW Measurement team; Ian Muir, head of MOVE’s Joint Industry Committee; John Grono, the MFA’s project representative; and the other past and present members of the Joint Industry Committee members, for their commitment, passion and professionalism throughout the project’s development.
He further acknowledged the MOVE Board members and operators’ staff who had worked so diligently in preparing the system for market.
MOVE is now the only Australian outdoor media measurement system endorsed by the OMA, MFA and AANA.
Outdoor Media Association of Australia
www.oma.com.au
