Last year we wrote a little about the new Out of Home measuring system called Eyes On. Back then it was still a theory and a nice look into the future. As it happens, the future is now and Eyes On is the currency for the Out of Home (OOH) media measurement. Eyes On is a better way and it’s now real.
Over the past few decades OOH industry and media planners have used Daily Effective Circulation (DEC) as the primary measurement, which has been based off of traffic counts surrounding specific outdoor boards. OOH was used as a broad reach vehicle. Given the DEC measurement, it was almost impossible to demographically target a specific audience. OOH was purchased via “showings”, typically a #100, #75, #50 and #25. The showing number represented a percentage reach of the market population. The number of units/panels required to achieve a specific showing varied by market. As a way to standardize OOH delivery, The Traffic Audit Bureau for Media Measurement (TAB), developed the Eyes On concept as an alternative to the DEC.
TAB developed what they call the four building blocks of Eyes On – Circulation (more accurate traffic counts); Visibility Research (travel simulation eye tracking data that actually converts the number of people passing a display to the audience that actually sees the advertisement); Demographics (Census and trip survey data is used to identify the demographic composition of people passing each display); Reach and Frequency (trip origins and destination information). The research program was designed to determine the portion of the population who pass an OOH advertisement and actually see it. It also takes into account how a unit’s format, size, road type/speed, road side, angle to the road and distance to the road effect the likelihood that the advertising will be noticed.
The transition from DEC and showings will take some time to completely comprehend the new metric with many new terms: CSBA’s, EOI’s, VAI’s, PRS, MAP and many more. With Eyes On measurement, buying OOH will be more sophisticated, accurate and more in-line with numbers and terms media planners/buyers are more familiar with.
As of January 1, 2012 Eyes On is the currency for the OOH industry and data is now available for the Philadelphia market. If you would like to hear more about the new metric please feel free to contact your friendly media managers – Debbie, Alena or Holly.