The case for measurement as a standard in OOH (plus, what we've learned thus far)

By David Burrick , Chief Strategy Officer @ Intersection Co.

Every now and then, I go to a restaurant and after my meal is complete, I am handed a special after-meal treat - an Andes Chocolate Mint. As delicious as the Andes Mint is, it is not the ultimate determinant of a quality meal. If the food is bad and I get an Andes Mint afterwards, I will not return to the restaurant. So in the end, while an Andes mint is a great way to surprise and delight customers, it is not essential to a successful restaurant offering.

For too long, the out-of-home (OOH) advertising industry has treated measurement like an Andes mint. We occasionally offer it to our customers after a campaign as a special treat, but it is usually not a core part of our offering. As a result, many customers spend money with OOH without any expectations of measurement, thinking about the medium as more “brand-building” than “performance-driving.”

This is increasingly out-of-step with the rest of the advertising industry. For almost every brand we work with in the OOH industry, their largest pool of advertising dollars are spent with Google, Facebook, and/or Amazon. All of these large digital publishers provide robust, real-time data to their advertising clients, allowing them to optimize their ad spend to best achieve their desired business results.?

Admittedly, there are technical challenges that make OOH media harder to measure than traditional digital advertising. However, there has been tremendous progress in OOH measurement capabilities over the past few years. Now, OOH publishers who make a commitment to measurement have the capability to provide insights to a broader set of customers than ever before.?

At Intersection, we have started providing always-on measurement for many of our media products. The good news is that when you study a broader swath of your advertising campaigns, you get a wider range of insights that are helpful to publishers and advertisers. Below are some key insights we have learned from our commitment to always-on measurement:

• Targeted OOH campaigns around retail locations consistently drive increased foot traffic: This sounds simple, but is something that many retailers still have not fully taken advantage of— if you run OOH advertising in the area around your store, it drives people into your store. For example, data from a recent campaign in New York City with a large coffee chain showed that customers who were exposed to an ad for the retailer were 1.9x more likely to walk into the store than a control group of similar customers who were not exposed to the ad. Moreover, this lift in foot traffic driven by the ad campaign was even higher on units in the immediate vicinity surrounding a store.?
• OOH campaigns consistently drive digital performance: Not only do we see that OOH campaigns drive foot traffic, but we consistently see that the campaigns we measure drive improved rates of actions online. For example, a major New York tourist destination ran a campaign onLinkNYC digital street kiosks. We were able to observe that customers exposed to this advertising campaign were 52% more likely to purchase a ticket online than a control group of similar consumers who did not see the ad. Moreover, we were able to share with the client how that digital performance lift changed over time. We consistently see that digital performance lift improves over time, as customers have increased frequency of exposure to an advertising campaign.
• OOH campaigns consistently provide competitive CPAs compared to other channels: In addition to observing that our campaigns can drive digital results, we have also seen that these campaigns have comparable, if not better, cost per acquisition (CPA) compared to other forms of advertising. At Intersection, we have always-on measurement for all of our bus advertising campaigns. As a result, we are able to average performance of campaigns by advertising category, and compare those results to industry benchmarks. We consistently see positive average results across most categories. For example, our average CPA for Higher Education clients on our bus media is approximately $59. This is highly competitive compared to the average customer acquisition cost in the industry, which is over $1,000 according to SEO agency First Page Sage.

These are just some of the key insights we have been able to glean from our commitment to measurement. It has led to a deeper and more trusting relationship with our clients and, in many cases, increased buys and extensions. With this success over time, our team is learning that measurement is not something to be offered as a special treat but, rather, a core part of the standard meal.