News

DPAA study: More dollars to DOOH

August 13, 2012

A new survey of strategic media planners conducted by the Digital Place-based Advertising Association shows a significant increase in the percentage of digital place-based/digital out-of-home media spending that is coming out of digital and online budgets, according to an announcement today by the DPAA.

Just more than 40 percent of planners said that they will fund their digital place-based media plans through digital and online budgets, an increase of 75 percent over the 22.9 percent who said in the DPAA's 2011 survey that they would tap digital and online budgets to fund digital place-based media.

Outdoor budgets remained the most popular source for digital place-based media funding, with just more than 64 percent citing this category versus 54 percent in 2011.

Planners were asked: "When considering digital place-based networks for inclusion in your media plan(s), from which existing media would you fund the ad dollars?" The top five most frequently cited in the 2012 survey were the following:

• Outdoor: 64.2 percent (2011: 54.2 percent)
• Television: 40.7 percent (2011: 43.8 percent)
• Digital/Online: 40.1 percent (2011: 22.9 percent)
• Experimental/Test 19.8 percent (2011: 18.8 percent)
• Zero-Based Planning 15.4 percent (2011: 19.8 percent)

When asked to project spending for 2013, 94.2 percent of this year's survey respondents said they would include digital place-based media in their plans, compared to 86.3 percent in the 2011 research, a gain of 9 percent.

Awareness of research tools and services that include data on digital place-based media is increasing among strategic media planners. Among the research services including digital place-based media at the time the survey was fielded, overall awareness grew significantly year-to-year.

The study of planners' knowledge of digital place-based media research availability showed some key gains in awareness:

• Nielsen: 54 percent (2011: 46.4 percent)
• GfK MRI: 41.9 percent (2011: 38.5 percent)
• IMS: 32 percent (2011: 26 percent)
• Experian Simmons: 31.6 percent (2011: 23.4 percent)
• Arbitron: 20.2 percent (2011: 20.4 percent)

"Digital place-based media is a sector on the rise," said Susan Danaher, president and CEO of the DPAA. "The trend lines are all positive, the most notable being a steadily increasing intent to incorporate digital place-based media in media plans and a greater awareness of the availability of research to aid in the planning process. These two trends obviously go hand-in-hand, and their solid upward tracking bode well for our sector's continued revenue growth in the years ahead."

The survey was conducted online from May 1-29, 2012, by the DPAA among 1,761 media professionals employed at full-service and media service agencies around the country. Response rate was 11.9 percent.

Planning strategies and case studies will be featured prominently in the DPAA's fifth annual Digital Media Summit, to be held Oct. 16 at the New York Hilton in New York City, Danaher said.

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