ADCENTRICITY, a North American aggregator and strategist for the buying of digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising, has announced the creation of the “Research Lite” audience-research service to help individual brands and advertisers evaluate the effectiveness of their ad campaigns in the DOOH medium.
ADCENTRICITY, which aggregates inventory across 80 DOOH networks, reports that Research Lite includes both pre-packaged and customized audience-research studies that are conducted across multiple DOOH networks and venues.
“The key service provider for the Research Lite option is Peoplecount . . . an award-winning research firm and supplier of audited out-of-home circulation data,” ADCENTRICITY said in its press release.
Five research packages are offered
According to an ADCENTRICITY brochure provided with its press release, the five different pre-packaged services offered through its collaboration with Peoplecount range in price (for one local geographic market) from $US 4,200 up to $49,800. At $4,200, the basic “Snap Shot” pre-packaged service includes research at one venue in one local geographic market, with up to 15 survey questions to be asked of 100 consumers via intercept interviews. At $49,800, the high-end “Acute” pre-packaged service includes research at 10-20 venues in one local geographic market, with 20 survey questions to be asked of 2,000 consumers in intercept interviews.
To extend research beyond just one local geographic market, ADCENTRICITY reports that additional local markets can be added to the research packages for an additional $3,500 for the basic Snap Shot package and $33,500 for the high-end Acute package.
"There's a lot of pushback on digital out-of-home in general because of the lack of research to quantify an advertiser's return on investment," said Rob Gorrie, CEO for Adcentricity, in an interview published by Mediaweek. “Advertisers don't necessarily have $100,000 to conduct research. We wanted to make Research Lite really consumable."
Audience research data for single brands across one medium is rare
In the press release, Adcentricity pointed out that the type of customized single-brand research packages which Research Lite offers across one medium (DOOH) are rare. The press release stated, “Normally research initiatives are syndicated programs that involve several brands or are a major undertaking and investment by [one] brand across multiple disciplines. Being able to activate a research study on an individual medium [DOOH] . . . presents a complete solution for [advertising] agencies and brands to initiate and evaluate campaigns effectively and efficiently.”
Kelly McGillivray, president and chief methodologist of Toronto-based Peoplecount, said, “We think this type of offering is an efficient way to help prove the value of the [DOOH] medium to the advertising community. The campaign objectives that Research Lite addresses -- from sales lifts to brand awareness and message recall -- are the types of metrics advertisers are looking for to determine the success of their campaigns,”
McGillivray added, “The largest challenge in this project was developing ‘off-the-shelf’ packages to bundle cost-effective services that provide accountable data for the advertiser.”
Verizon is Adcentricity’s first customer for Research Lite
Adcentricity reported that Verizon Wireless, a U.S. mobile-phone service provider, was the first client to utilize the new research service for the phone company’s new “Push to Talk” service offering. The marketing/advertising agency Zenith Optimedia created the content for the Verizon Wireless DOOH campaign.
According to the Adcentricity press release, the Research conducted for Verizon showed that its campaign, compared to 10 other campaigns, was the most noticed among all the ad campaigns staged within each venue. The press release reported that “The Verizon Wireless campaign effectively reached the targeted consumer within each market and venue in which it ran. 46 percent of all respondents were within [the] occupation, age and household income target profile,” the Adcentricity press release said.
The release added, “The study also provided a deeper scope of insight for Verizon Wireless including: consumer brand perception, competitive services, purchase intent, market opportunity, ad creative impact and more strategic findings specific to the service and initiative.”
The significance
This is a very clever initiative that ADCENTRICITY and PeopleCount have put together. I believe the following features set this Research Lite research offering apart from other research options:
1) Pre-packaging:
Research Lite offers research options that are pre-packaged and pre-priced, therefore easier for ADCENTRICITY’s sales staff to sell.
2) Slicing the data in a new way:
Lite’s options are arranged so that an advertiser can get a view of how well one specific ad campaign works across multiple DOOH venues and networks. As ADCENTRICITY’s press release reports, that type of slicing of the data for specific brands on specific campaigns is very rare. I think this research approach offered by ADCENTRICITY and Peoplecount is truly innovative, offering brands a sharply focused look at their campaigns that brings real value to them.
3) Providing a low-cost entry point for brands to buy DOOH audience research:
Research Lite’s pricing options give the brands some cheaper alternatives, with the data costing them as little as $4,200. That affordable price tag is important, because it allows the brands to “test the waters” at a price they can easily afford. Then, after these brands sample the first “bite” at $4,200, hopefully they will like the taste of these insights and spend more for the next round of research.
4) Nielsen and Arbitron:
To my knowledge, Nielsen and Arbitron don’t do this type of research as a pre-packaged service at such low price points. Because Arbitron and Nielsen employ many hundreds of people and have high fixed costs, it is difficult for them to make any profit doing small-scale research projects in the $5,000 to $25,000 range.
5) Peoplecount’s credibility:
Because of the research work that Peoplecount does in the conventional out-of-home advertising market, they have lots of credibility with lots of advertisers across Canada and the USA. Peoplecount – like Arbitron and Nielsen – provides reliable data.
Again, Research Lite from ADCENTRICITY is a very exciting innovation. It’s another piece that has been added to complete the research puzzle which is advancing DOOH media here in North America.
Bill Collins is principal of DecisionPoint Media Insights (www.decisionpointmedia.com). DecisionPoint produces custom audience research for Digital Signage networks. It also provides B2B go-to-market strategy consulting for companies that market B2B products and services to the Digital Signage industry. Bill Collins can be reached at Bill@decisionpointmedia.com. 
