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When out-of-home research body Postar was established and started producing data in 1996, it finally gave the outdoor industry the measurement tool it had long needed. Postar went one stage further than other media audience research - as well as measuring a roadside poster's opportunity to see, it also took into account the likelihood of it being seen.

This served the industry well - for a while at least. But as society changed, the audiences advertisers are trying to reach have altered their habits and the world of outdoor media has expanded.

No longer is outdoor limited to roadside billboards. It can now be found on buses, in leisure centres, outside supermarkets and in all transport hubs - not to mention the changing dynamics and opportunities thrown up by digital.

In 2006, Postar extended its reach to include the London Underground. While there's no doubt this improved and updated Postar, there were still many areas where the out-of-home audience was not measured.



Technological advancements
However, this is all changing. James Whitmore, Postar's managing director, says the body's new audience measurement strategy, revealed last month, responds to two major factors: the spread of out-of-home media, and technological advancements and the opportunities these provide for gathering information.

Whitmore says Postar's innovations are about "being brave enough to take another step as big as we did in the early 1990s and coming up with a good solution".

He adds: "This is a big change in mindset for Postar - rather than adding things on, we're saying, 'start from scratch in thinking about it: trash it and start again'."

To this end, Postar sent out a request for proposals to the research industry at the end of 2006. Around 25 companies came back with ideas and the reassuring consensus was that Postar was taking the right overall approach.

Postar has since handed the multi-million-pound, six-year contract to Ipsos Mori, and the first results from the new audience measurement system will be reported in the second half of 2009. The updated research will provide a unified currency for audience measurement across all major out-of-home platforms.

Bus, rail, taxi, retail and leisure will be measured by Postar for the first time (alongside all roadside formats and the London Underground), and Postar's audience research sample will treble in size to 20,000 people.

Previously, Postar measured its audience to provide reach and frequency for poster campaigns by looking at traffic counts, travel surveys, visibility studies and an audit of panels/sites. The new system will still involve these same four elements, but the methodology of some will change.

Traffic counts are not one of them. Postar buys in this data from third parties and the only alteration is that the company will need to buy additional data as its reach extends.

Similarly, the audit of the sites will not change, as this is still based on registering how big a site is and on details such as whether it is illuminated. Any improvements here will focus on storing the data more efficiently and IT aspects, as well as on any new classifications required.

The biggest changes will be seen in the travel survey. The long-term aim for Postar is to move to passive measurement with the aid of the new GPS technology on the market, as this will also increase the breadth of the survey.

The methodology currently involves interviewing people on the street about their travel patterns over the past few days or weeks. This determines the regularity of trips and who is doing what. By increasing the number of people it samples, Postar will be able to pick up lower-penetration media.

Postar has been piloting GPS and has been impressed with the results. "GPS has improved. Pilot studies showed it was pretty accurate and when it wasn't, it was so inaccurate it was easy to spot," says Whitmore. "The problem is whether people carry the meter and how you make sure that they do."

The greatest limitation to GPS is that it cannot be used indoors. When that is the case, modelling can often be used instead. This is certainly possible on the London Underground, where the exact number of people going into the Tube is known and people take clearly defined routes.

Other technologies being trialled include radio frequency identification, which could potentially be used on concourses and in shopping malls. Overall, however, Postar is not going to be at the cutting edge. "We have to be one step behind in technology because it has to be proven first," says Whitmore.

The visibility research element - scientific lab-based analysis on what people focus on to determine how people view posters in different places - is also constantly evolving. As movement becomes a greater factor, through digital screens and static posters on moving vehicles, a new method is needed.

So the new Postar system is evolving: Whitmore hopes it can go from measuring around half the out-of-home medium to 90%. But it won't happen quickly: even if everything goes smoothly, Whitmore admits it will probably be 18 months before it is up and running. "We are at a very critical stage; it won't be easy in the next year," he says.

Implementing change requires the approval of both media buyers and sellers. Alan James, chief executive of the Outdoor Advertising Association, says all sides have agreed on what the research will look like and the costs it will incur.

Whitmore says: "Everybody has been working in unison; the changes were accepted by both parties over a period of time. Nobody likes to pay more, but introducing things that will improve the situation comes with a price tag."

Mungo Knott, managing director of UK sales for lamppost ad specialist Streetbroadcast, believes the changes are vital for Postar to meet the demands of the new environments and for it to stay relevant to clients and to the out-of-home industry.



Dissatisfied parties
However, out-of-home is such a broad church that, even with the changes, it will not be able to include everybody, so there will be some dissatisfied parties.

David Walsh, marketing director, In Situ Media, says: "We have always had a problem in that it's hard for destination media to get a look-in for Postar. We have to come up with our own version of a measurement system."

Walsh reports that three or four years ago, the feeling was that clients relied on Postar, but as the out-of-home market has broadened, clients have been more accepting of the measurement that outdoor owners can offer.

For instance, JCDecaux's Profiler tool brings an additional layer to the equation by choosing the best billboards for a specific audience. The outdoor ad firm worked with Oxford Retail Consultants to model and predict the passing audiences for all its sites, rather than judging appropriateness on where the site is located.

David McEvoy, JCDecaux's marketing director, says: "We wanted to change the way we sell, so it was about the people rather than the places. The Profiler means agencies and clients can buy an audience rather than just panel numbers."

Subaru was the first advertiser to use the Profiler for its campaign for the Impreza car. The brief was to reach young, upmarket urbanites, and so 100 national Premiere billboards were selected to reach an audience with a male bias.

Clear Channel Outdoor offers advertisers its Research Monitor, which it has been operating in conjunction with research firm Millward Brown for around 10 years. The Research Monitor measures the effectiveness of clients' campaigns and provides feedback on how to improve impacts for future activity.

The Research Monitor also offers profiling to refine districts for any audience or tribe, using TGI data and mapping to target by postcode.

While the changes to Postar and owners' additional measurements all help, some agencies still feel out-of-home measurement has an inherent disadvantage.

Simon Jenkins, acting head of outdoor at MPG, says: "There is a broader issue of accountability. We live in an age of return on investment, where we have to justify every pound spent. Many clients want econometric modelling and TV is brilliant from an econometric point of view as you get really detailed information.

"The problem with outdoor is that you buy a block of two weeks, so the quality of the data is archaic by comparison. Any media with accurate impacts comes out better in the modelling. So if you only take numbers into consideration, outdoor is a very hard sell."

However, Jenkins feels this will improve when digital becomes mainstream, as impacts will be tracked in a similar way to radio.

Oliver Ford, group account director at Kinetic, applauds Postar's efforts and wants the research body to put the emphasis on the areas that are receiving the greatest investment. He says: "From the buying side, there should be priority for the money at risk, such as where the most advertising money is being spent."

Postar's new system may not be perfect, but as audiences increasingly move out of home and the industry expands its reach, the audience research body's move to be more inclusive of the broader range of outdoor opportunities has clearly come at a critical time.

Read more from the Media Week Outdoor Special