For decades, impressions have been the standard of advertising measurement. They’re easy to understand, simple enough to report and analyze, and useful for estimating reach. As media channels multiply and a consumer’s path to purchase is becoming more complex, impressions are no longer enough to explain whether advertising or a given campaign actually works,
In today’s world, advertisers are shifting their focus from sole exposure to actual impact. This requires measuring not just who saw an ad, but what actually happened next after that initial view. This evolution of advertising analysis is changing the way brands evaluate their performance and goals; especially when they use out-of-home (OOH) advertising.
Why Impressions Are No Longer Enough
Impressions tell us that an ad was displayed and how many individuals it may or may not have come in meaningful contact with. What we know for sure is that an ad was displayed, but not that it was actually noticed, remembered, or acted on. The media environment is filled with distractions and two campaigns with similar impression metrics can deliver results that are vastly different.
As brands tighten their marketing spend and demand visible results from it, they’re asking hard hitting questions to their teams like:
- Did this campaign influence consumer behavior?
- Did it drive awareness, influence, or action?
- Did it support or hurt other channels in the media mix?
Answering these questions requires a broader view of metrics and numbers, one that not only guesses who was around an ad, but how real-world outcomes were generated from it.
Modern Advertising & Impact
Impact is a measurement tool that looks beyond exposure to understand how ads actually affect consumer behavior. Depending on a given campaign, impact can look like or include:
- Physical location visits
- Social media engagement or phone app downloads
- Negative, neutral, or positive changes in brand awareness or favorability
- Lift in sales or conversions immediately or overtime a campaign’s duration
Rather than relying on impressions and treating them like the end-all-be-all, impact-based measurement treats them as the very beginning; the starting point.
How OOH Measurement Has Changed Over Time
Out-of-home advertising was once considered very difficult to measure. Today, that’s no longer true or the case. Advances in mobile data collection, geo-targeting and location analytics, and other digital integrations with OOH now can connect exposure to outcomes.
Modern OOH measurement can reveal:
- How many people were exposed to an ad
- Where those audiences traveled to afterward
- Whether exposure increased visits to specific locations
- How OOH influenced online and digital behavior
This shift has given OOH an elevation from being a channel that is awareness only to something that is measurable and truly supporting in performance and goals acquisition.
The Future Is Now
The future of advertising measurement is not just about completely getting rid of impressions and devaluing their long-time importance; it’s about putting them into a more effective and useful context in the scope of OOH and advertising. Impressions still matter and will continue to matter, but they’re only one piece of a much larger advertising story.
