Another year comes, and I find myself wondering where the time goes! In welcoming 2013, I started reminiscing about the last ten years. It is amazing how far this industry has come since 2003, when I was working at the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA) in DC. Change is usually slow in the outdoor advertising industry. However, looking at the last 10 years, we have made a lot of progress. The challenges we have overcome and advancements made in the industry are enormous when you think about it.
Audience Measurement
Audience measurement for out of home has really evolved. No longer do we depend on traffic numbers and Daily Effective Circulation (DEC). We went through a lot of pains and trials to make progress in this area. Arbitron planned to develop a measurement standard introducing the demographics information to the measurement. Using travel diaries in Atlanta, Arbitron hoped to bring the measurement philosophy from radio to outdoor. Next, came Nielsen with a similar idea, but they used GPS technology to track consumers in Chicago. The industry was optimist about both possibilities but nothing came of them. Moving ahead to 2013, we have an audience measurement system from the Traffic Audit Bureau (TAB), called TAB OOH Ratings. Not only does it bring the industry to a new level, but has started to get agency adoption.
