Outdoor Advertising Association of Great Britain



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.

How is this done?

Pedestrian & Traffic Counts Across the UK
POSTAR provides Realistic and Reliable Coverage and Frequency Estimates through Annual Average Daily Flow (AADF) traffic counts and pedestrian counts from PMRS. Where no data exists the neural network provides figures giving us gross audience per panel.

Accurate “Eyes on Panel” Figures
Postar measures Visibility Adjusted Impacts per panel (VAI’s). This not only counts those who pass a panel but also determines who actually looks at a panel. Visibility studies have been carried out to evaluate how people actually look at a particular panel in different situations. By applying this information to the gross audience the VAI for each panel type (6-sheet, 48-sheet and 96-sheet) was calculated. The adjustment depends on the quality of each panel, the better the panel, the more audience is retained, therefore the closer the VAI is to the gross audience.

Poster Site Impacts – Who, When & Why?
POSTAR carried out an initial travel survey of 7,500 people that tracked 80,000 of their journeys. These journeys were then matched to the location of actual poster panels to provide socio-demographic information on people passing poster sites. This data has now been updated in London and a program of further surveys around the country starts in Spring 2003. The travel Surveys allow us to calculate the number of panels required to achieve coverage and frequency objectives for national, ITV area and conurbation campaigns.

Research into the Effects of Illumination & Seasonal Daylight on Cover
The cover of a panel will be affected by the number of hours of daylight, so a visibility model that could produce a seasonally sensitive impact estimate was constructed. This produced figures that differed for each month as daylight hours altered. The model also takes into account the whereabouts of the panel as the UK has a differing spread of daylight. If a panel is illuminated a better cover estimate will be applied as the panel will then be highlighted 24-hours a day.

The answers POSTAR provides are across variables covering the national, ITV area and conurbation campaigns, nine key demographic groups and three sizes of panel, 6-sheet, 48 sheet and 96 sheet.

Inclusivity
The future for Postar is to become Inclusive. This means that the audience measurement system will be expanded to include all major types of out of home media. We are well advanced in our work with Viacom Outdoor to include Trac and Busads research. Plans are also underway, working with Clear Channel, J.C.Decaux, Maiden Outdoor and Primesight to include rail, taxis, retail and additional pedestrian environments. There are discussions with a number of other out of home media owners who are keen to join Postar.

This move has been widely welcomed by the OAA, IPA, IPA Outdoor and ISBA.

For more information please visit the Postar website.
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