Audience Measurement - POSTAR
Postar provides arguably the closest relationship between ‘opportunity to see’ and ‘actually seen’ of any medium. This means you get not only data on how many people have had the opportunity to see a specific poster campaign, but more importantly, a realistic estimate of the number of people who have actually taken that opportunity.
INVESTING IN THE QUALITY OF AUDIENCE DATA
Postar is to greatly expand the breadth of its research. The new study will deliver a fully comprehensive view of the medium, employing the latest digital technology and a greatly increased sample size.
For the first time all the principle out-of-home sectors will be subject to investigation. This means that in addition to roadside panels and the London Underground, which are measured by the present system, we will be able to provide audience estimates for bus, rail, airports, taxis and an element of retail and leisure too. It will be possible to scrutinise the audience for each of these media, either singly or in combination. The first data should be on stream in the latter part of next year.
The new enlarged research contract has been awarded to a consortium headed by Ipsos MORI that includes MGE Data and the University of London.
There are a number of elements that set the study apart from what went before.
HUGELY INCREASED SAMPLE SIZE
Using the latest technology, GPS meters will be placed with ten thousand respondents to track their every movement over a nine day period. The devices are also enabled with a GPRS and GSM capability to help fill in any gaps in GPS coverage. There will be some places where it is not possible to gain the level of detail required – for example in some public concourses or the deeper tunnels of the London tube system. Here a mixture of RFID (which one might think of as “indoor GPS”) and statistical modeling will be required. By using this methodology it will be possible to deliver far more robust data from a far greater sample size and it will no longer be necessary to rely on respondent recall. The study will produce a more accurate picture of real journeys, linking all the modes of travel undertaken by each individual.
EMBRACING ALL FORMAT STYLES
Secondly the eye-tracking research, which has been the bedrock of Postar since its inception, will be evolved to account for the effect of moving images, be they scrolling poster sites or digital screens. In this way out-of-home will remain the only medium that adjusts an opportunity to see a message to account for the likelihood to actually do so – what we call “visibility adjustment”. This is a unique position to Outdoor in that it delivers a much stricter measure than offered by other media and gives advertisers a better appreciation of what they are actually buying.
INCREASED USER BENEFITS
The major benefit to users of the new study is the greater depth and breadth of analysis that will become available. It will be possible to look at a wider range of audiences and lifestyles, and to do so for smaller geographic areas than is currently the case. Subscribers to other frequently used data sources such as TGI will find it far easier to create links to Postar and thus significantly enhance the extent of their analysis. With a superior set of data on hand, post campaign scrutiny will become more meaningful too.
The industry is clearly determined to stay abreast of developments in the medium and at the forefront of media research. It has dramatically increased its investment to enable Postar to do so.
This move has been widely welcomed by the OAA, IPA, IPA Outdoor and ISBA.
For more information please visit the Postar website.