Article
Opinion: Do we need digital signage audience measurement right now?
Best Buy's digital signage producer questions some of the recent developments in DOOH measurement from OVAB, Nielsen and others.
In 1939, the first television was demonstrated at the World's Fair in New York. According to Nielsen, it wasn't until 1950 that television audience measurement was developed, and it was another four years until active measurement occurred.
From the 1990s to today, the internet industry has matured in engagement and measurement, but it has taken place over at least 15 years of incredible work by every discipline involved.
There is a lot of attention being paid to proper measurement of Out-Of-Home (OOH) messaging networks. It is a young and growing industry with a lot of key players from every discipline trying to figure the best business model for prosperity.
After attending the Digital Signage Expo and Global Shop, reading through dozens of white papers and articles, listening to the best and brightest minds of this industry, and finding more questions than answers, I wonder: Do we really need to worry about measurement right now? Rome was not built in a day.
What tools do we have to measure?
Last year, the Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau (OVAB) introduced the first comprehensive set of guidelines designed to understand the value of an audience in a given space at a given time. On page 24 of the OVAB Audience Metrics Guidelines, it states, "Three constituencies have been involved: research providers, media sellers, and media buyers."
Were venues (network owners) involved? If so, which ones? I know of at least one retailer on the Fortune 100 list that was not in this discussion.
In Measurement and Analysis for Digital Signage, author James Bickers writes that "OVAB plans to enforce adherence to the guidelines among its 38 member companies and to promote best audience measurement practices across the entire digital signage community." (Note: I cite this white paper a few more times in this article, referring to it simply as Measurement.)
What about that community? What about the hundreds, or thousands, of networks that are not OVAB members or OVAB compliant? How will these guidelines be enforced? Do networks have to pay the huge OVAB dues to get accreditation for compliance? Would an advertiser avoid a non-compliant venue? Would an advertiser avoid a retailer on the Fortune 100 list?
Dave Haynes, the brilliant mind behind the Sixteen:Nine blog, wrote an article on February 14, Are you OVAB compliant? Nope…, citing Nurlan Urazbaev of BroadSign and his concerns that the guidelines are "heavy going," that networks must work with a third party to properly measure the average unit audience, and the fear that, "there will be companies who will start claiming ‘compliance' for PR reasons, without even reading the guidelines requirements."
This is coming from someone very active with OVAB.
We know of Wal-Mart's decision to pull out from the PRISM project, and Nielsen's eventual decision to shut it down. We also know about POPAI's MARI (Marketing at Retail Initiative) project. Bill Gerba's article on January 27, Measuring Out-of-Home Media and DOOH without Nielsen PRISM, suggests MARI may move forward after initial obstacles.
According to Janet Stilson's article on MediaWeek.com, Coming Into Focus, The Traffic Audit Bureau's "Eyes On" measurement initiative ("Four years and $20 million in the making") is set to release ratings on the outdoor industry. This is for outdoor billboards, but what if the results are so solid that brick-and-mortar venues take notice and adapt these measurement metrics to their own environments? It's traffic, right?
Teri Moore from Digital Dirt wrote in her article, The Measuring Matrix - What's Real and Are We Ready to Take the Red Pill?, that, understanding the evolution of technology and standards, "…we immediately enforced strict ROI guidelines…allowing us to report accurate measurements to advertisers."
In Measurement, Scott Templeton, senior vice president of Business Development for Intellimat (now LevelVision), said that he "…has attracted brand and new product introduction money from Coke and Pepsi because I had a digital network and proven track record."
Rob Winston, senior account manager with Arbitron Outdoor, is quoted in Measurement saying, "Digital signage is not easy to buy. Each network is offering its own unique value proposition and must therefore be evaluated individually. The grocery network, restaurant/bar network, transit network, mall network, waiting room network, etc… are all used differently and have their own merits. Learning, evaluating and deciding on all of these individual networks is hard work for advertisers."
Bill Yackey, editor of Digital Signage Today, wrote about research and audience metrics last December. In his article, Research Key to Providing DOOH Audience Metrics, he quotes Suzanne Alicea, President of OVAB, stating, "The guidelines are just that. They're not strict standards at this point. They essentially outline the information you should be reporting. This information should be common across any audience study from any researcher for any network."
Did Ms. Moore and Mr. Templeton use OVAB's measurement guidelines? If not, what was their measurement matrix? If it's different, and if it's successful, and if OVAB's guidelines are only guidelines and not rules, why should they move toward a different set of metrics? Because someone else said they should? Here's the dangerous part: If one method of metric measurement shows a positive return on the investment, but the other method does not, who should we believe?
The shopper mindset
We know that a shopper's behavior in certain environments is affected by digital messaging. OVAB's guidelines provide results for measuring the size of an audience in a given space, and Nielsen research does a terrific job of telling me that digital signage changes behaviors. But what changed the behavior? And how was it changed?
If content is king, then the content should have a measurable effect on audience perception. It's acceptable to measure the number of people in a given space at a given time, but impact is the missing link.
I believe this is the most important aspect of true audience measurement to consider. How an audience member acts in one location is radically different than how he/she acts in another. Example: You go to Target, a "needs" based destination, to pick up toilet paper and baby food and a pair of socks because you need them.
Your mindset is very different when you go to Best Buy, a "wants" based destination, where you're looking for a new mobile phone that makes your life easier and looks better on your hip than that old clunker you have right now. If the same spot is running (say, a film trailer for a DVD release) in both locations, and you see it and comprehend it, how can I measure that one location had greater impact than the other?
Herb Sorensen, Ph.D., global scientific director for TNS Sorensen, wrote a superb article, Deconstructing the Shopping Trip (so far!), on understanding the shopper's mindset during a shopping trip. He writes that a shopping trip "…can be divided into search and selection, with search having two components, the first of which is cruising, which consists of a macro search for the area in the store where sought merchandise is located. This cruising typically constitutes something like 60 percent of the shoppers trip."
So 60 percent of my time is already taken by wandering around, even though I may know what I want.
Further he writes, "The search and select paradigm highlights the twin barriers to purchase that retailers and their brand suppliers erect:
• Where is the . . ? • Which one of these . . ?
The first of these plagues the shopper when store layout does not match the shopper's natural navigational practices and the second when it is unclear which of many options is the right one for the shopper."
As a shopper, does digital signage fix any of this for me? That's very debatable. If it does, can we truly measure it?
Jim Lucas, executive vice president/director of Draftfcb's Shopper Marketing division, writes in his article, Retail's Ecosystem, that, "…there are thousands of elements - i.e., products, navigational signage, format, layout, departments, aisles, shelf organization, displays, digital signage, interactive kiosks, etc. - all sharing the same habitat. In short, there are hundreds of communications vying for the shopper's attention."
David Drain, executive director of the Digital Signage Association, wrote in his article, The Psychology of Digital Signage, about research by Brian Brooks and Kelly Caravan from 3M. Trying to understand the psychology of branding and promotion, Mr. Brooks said, "Branding doesn't just change our emotional experience, but literally our physical reaction." Mr. Brooks's research suggests that a customer's eyes will focus on desirable areas of the store based on colors.
To this point, I would lean toward charging top-tier brands premium rates on my program if they already have an advantage before the customer even steps foot in the store, especially if I have a private label brand that I want to promote as well. Or would metrics force me into "one-rate-fits-all?"
In Mr. Yackey's article, he writes about Danoo and its results after commissioning Arbitron to study audience engagement. Seeking to understand the engagement with promoting FOX's show House, the study found that, "…the ads drove a 25 percent increase in intent to watch among their audiences."
Here are my questions: Where was Danoo showing this promotion and what other content was around these particular spots? What if I sell the House TV series on DVD? What if I promote a competing drama right before or after promoting House? What if I show a clip of grass growing before the House spot and a clip of paint drying after?
Nikki Baird, managing partner at Retail Systems Research wrote a brief article, Marketing Metrics in the Age of Social Media. After speaking at the Digital Signage Expo she wrote, "…we came to the conclusion that performance is ultimately what matters - because how can you really justify digital in-store media on anything else, given the context of being at the shelf - at the point of decision? But in order to understand the levers that move response, we must make that ‘deep' effort to understand the why behind the buy."
Currently, Bill Gerba is writing a series of articles based on his outstanding presentation at Digital Signage Expo. Writing in his article, Digital Signage Screen Placement: Understanding Store Layout, I think he sums up the challenge quite nicely: "Even if you do everything you possibly can to properly integrate your screens into a venue, the differences in personalities, demographics and mentalities of the viewers from one place to the next can make a huge difference."
It seems we're rushing to measure something we don't fully comprehend. We have a corporate phrase for this: Ready. Fire. Aim.
Where do we go from here?
The OOH industry is young and still trying to figure out its place in our culture, still trying to figure out why people act the way they do in certain situations, trying to figure out that elusive connection.
At a time when technology and content are finally developing a synergy that enhances the experience, is it truly imperative that we start measuring right away? This industry is growing so fast that any statistical measurement done today could be obsolete within a few years, if not a few months.
Network operators and venues are in no hurry to become metric compliant; media planners and buyers don't fully understand the medium yet; agencies are still working toward a full understanding of creative and compelling communication techniques for OOH; OVAB is trying to enforce compliance with only a few dozen members; and there are other companies out there with different and perhaps stronger methods for measurement and definition.
This feels like I should grade my daughter on calculus while she's still learning to count to 10. With economy so low, now is not a good time to measure or set metrics based on audience participation with OOH messaging. Clearly the traffic is skewed; huge numbers of people are using mass transit and watching point-of-transit messaging, but retail and point-of-sale traffic has disappeared.
There are probably hundreds of theories and technologies around measuring an audience and message impact. With these theories come dozens of terms and definitions that, even for one who loves to read white papers, make me scratch my head. I have cited 13 sources for this post, and I'm certain I haven't even scratched a byte out of the digital iceberg.
My take: Wait two more years. Before we jump into the necessity of measurement and compliance, let's consider our current and future situations. We constantly preach that we should build a strategy first, so let's do it. For retail, now could not be a worse time to measure customer engagement, so let's wait for the numbers to come back. Let's hear every voice from every discipline — the technology providers, the venues and agencies, regardless of size, the research organizations, and every other key player. The more we learn about optimal customer engagement, the better prepared we will be to hit the market in full "bull" mode and apply proper measurement techniques that benefit every discipline.
Related Media
Subscribe
Get the latest news and resources from Digital Signage Today.
