News

Canadian DOOH health network crosses 1K venue, 1M viewer marks

July 4, 2011

DOOH health network Canadian Health Media Network announced today that it has surpassed 1,000 venues and 1 million weekly viewers

CHMN now covers all Canadian provinces with a single-source media planning and buying DOOH platform for health and wellness-focused advertisers, the company said.

CHMN said it has doubled its venue and audience numbers in the past 12 months, and the network — which operates DOOH screens in medical environments such as clinic, lab and hospital waiting areas — covers Canada's top 11 DMAs and also reaches into more than 200 rural markets.

CHMN is a collective of independently-operated national and regional health and wellness networks, all using a common, shared sales and marketing team and standardized metrics that make it easy for media planning professionals to develop effective and efficient campaigns.

"Bringing CHMN's operating footprint and audience size to where it now sits is an important step, not only for the network and its affiliates, but the DOOH industry in Canada as a whole," CHMN CEO Ed Voltan said in the announcement. "We now have a national network using what we believe are credible, easily-grasped audience metrics that line up with how other media is bought and sold."

Fundamental to CHMN is the adherence to a set of DOOH Audience Metrics Guidelines, the company said. The guidelines address the fundamentals of traditional media planning (reach and frequency), while also tackling the uniquely nuanced challenges of measuring audiences exposed to DOOH venues, such as average dwell times and content loop lengths.

"Basic common sense metrics, that at least minimally, elevate this medium to apples-to-apples comparisons with traditional media, are essential for the media planning and buying process," said Voltan, adding that he hopes CHMN's efforts spur other DOOH networks in Canada to follow suit. "Many of the industry's larger OOH players — who are transitioning from static to digital boards — are avoiding or ignoring the effects of dwell time and loop length on their previously accredited audience measurements. This practice is disingenuous, and does a disservice to the industry as a whole."

"The medium has immense potential," said Voltan, who has been selling national ad mediums for more than three decades. "But full acceptance with media planning pros will only come when we, as an industry, neuter any objections about dubious metrics and get to the real conversation. That's about how digital out-of-home media delivers context in programming, and reaches people at impactful moments."