Audience Measurement Phase 1

Audience Measurement

In February 2010, the Outdoor Media Association (OMA) will launch Australia's first industry-wide audience measurement tool for outdoor media known as MOVE (Measurement of Outdoor Visibility and Exposure).

MOVE is owned by the OMA and its five largest members - APN Outdoor, EYE, Adshel, oOh!media and JCDecaux. The OMA represents the interests of all other OMA Media Display Members with inventory in the MOVE system.

Outdoor media operators have invested $5 million in building the new system which will be a world first in that it will provide audience measurement data for all main outdoor formats including roadside, transport (railway stations, airports, etc) and shopping centres.

It will also be the first time in Australia that media buyers will have direct access to accurate and measurable data on outdoor media campaigns.

A Federal Government grant of $830,000 was provided towards the development of MOVE under the Industry Cooperative Innovation Program (ICIP) administered by AusIndustry.

MOVE is being built by a consortium of Australian and international research companies, including Brisbane-based transport planners and modellers, Veitch Lister Consulting, and Simon Cooper Associates, the world's leading research expert in the visibility of outdoor media.

A new measurement currency - Likelihood-To-See (LTS) 

MOVE will introduce a new currency to Australian media measurement - Likelihood To See (LTS).

This is achieved by discounting the total audience to only include those people who in probability will see an outdoor advertising face.

Using variables such as the size of the face, illumination and speed with which an audience is passing, a Visibility Index (VI) score is applied against each face.  The VIs are used to convert total audiences - that is the Opportunity to See (OTS) results - to actual audiences (the LTS contacts).

The concept of visibility adjustment was first developed as part of the successful Postar system which was introduced in the United Kingdom in the mid-1990's. Mr Cooper was the architect of the Postar system with the assistance of the London-based researcher, Dr Paul Barber.

In addition to the UK, visibility adjusted contacts for outdoor media measurement systems are now used throughout Europe and are in development in other countries such as the United States.

Reach and frequency results within the MOVE system are based entirely on LTS contacts.   

Coverage

The MOVE system contains around 60,000 individual outdoor media faces, or more than 30,000 individual sites. Only inventory sold by Media Display Members of the OMA in the five metropolitan markets of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth are currently included in the system.

MOVE will provide measurement data for all the main formats including supersites and billboards, bus/tram shelters, kiosks and phone booths, buses and trams, and a range of internal environments including airports, railway stations and shopping centres.

Access

MOVE is a web-based system that will be directly accessible by media agencies, outdoor media companies (members of the OMA) and other authorised users.  Access is via login and password and only MOVE has the authority to create users.

Media agencies will be provided six months free access to the system following its launch.