Foundational Statements on Geopath’s Mission:
Geopath will proceed to help define, and continuously refine, the place-based standards for systematic OOH/DOOH ad unit audience forecasting and delivery (collaborating with the MRC) today and over the next 12-18 months.
Geopath aspires to pursue campaign delivery reporting (to complement the existing forecasting measurements, leveraging 1st party and 3rd party data, and create temporal consistency regarding planning-to-campaign measures) as part of this effort. The scope of this verification effort is not currently envisioned to include specific campaign-specific delivery data; it focuses on measuring the ad units published in place-based venues where advertisers are demanding ‘as delivered’ impression estimates, given similar data has been received through other measurement companies.
In the near term (over the next 6-12 months), Geopath’s constituents expect that the reach/frequency and audience impression calculations generated for OOH signage should be extended to support various fixed-duration ad rotation configurations, including audience targeting by frequently-used audience segments (with user-configurable base audiences), then proceeding to address audience forecasts for signage with dynamic/complex DOOH ad rotation logic.
Geopath’s constituents expect that a universal identifier for OOH/DOOH inventory (a Geopath spot ID) will be adopted by OOH/DOOH ad exchanges (PlaceExchange, Hivestack, Vistar, etc.) for use in assigning and reconciling inventory across the OOH/DOOH landscape, for both Geopath-audited and unaudited inventory, for use in campaign packages.
Geopath will focus on applying both likely-to-see (LTS) impressions and opportunity-to-see (OTS) impressions (a.k.a. ‘viewable impressions’) as the first stage of this exercise, expecting that reach and frequency (while important) will be a secondary objective in the intermediate-term (12-24 months).
Geopath will not focus on forecasting nor measuring recall, favorability, or affinity regarding any ad unit measured (as these capabilities relate to the performance of the ad campaign); instead, Geopath will focus on measuring the audience exposure to specific ad units.
Problem Statements (for place-based media owners and place-based OOH-focused agencies):
[Highest priority]: At the end of 2023, existing measurement solutions from large for-profit research companies will no longer be supported, and an alternative (trusted) place-based measurement solution will be necessary to retain advertiser spend from 2023 into 2024 and beyond.
[High priority]: OOH audience measurement metrics generated must allow for comparisons with OTT, streaming digital video, and linear TV formats (because the majority of ad dollars from larger advertisers are coming from video-based ad media budgets and therefore exposure metrics should be comparable across platforms)
[High priority]: OOH audience measurement metrics do not always adjust for the viewability and visibility of the ad units reported (instead, they represent opportunities for ad visibility rather than likely ad exposures)
[High Priority]: Audience impressions, as defined by Geopath, may be fundamentally incompatible with definitions of ‘audience impressions' from larger agencies (e.g., opportunity-to-see impressions, impressions served), rendering Geopath audience impressions insufficient as the sole outputs for all OOH planning purposes.
[Medium priority]: OOH audience measurement metrics are not typically offered on a ‘forecasted’ basis that are fully comparable against ‘as delivered’ metrics (thereby adding complexity when reconciling what was sold and what was delivered from an advertiser’s perspective)
[Medium priority]: For place-based OOH/DOOH media with limited foot traffic, indoor measurement metrics from Geopath show higher variance and lower precision than operator-provided metrics, thereby rendering Geopath data as a (perceived) under-representation of impressions to those ad units.
[Medium priority]: For place-based OOH/DOOH media, Operators may provide levels of granularity of measurement (e.g., exposure, engagement, etc) that are supplementary to (or different than) than what Geopath reports for other OOH operators, thereby challenging the ability of agencies to transact or plan using Geopath measures.
[Medium priority]: ‘Impression multiplier’ values for place-based inventory are often so high as to be unbelievable (from the agency/buy side perspective), leading many agencies to request scientific references that describe the ‘real-world’ basis of Operator-provided impression multipliers.
[Medium Priority]: For place-based media, Operators and Agencies need the ability to understand the reach % and corresponding frequency of exposure for a customizable base audience in order to sell inventory to some large advertisers (e.g., of the number of people who visited location X, estimate what % of that audience interacted with or observed a particular screen).
[Medium Priority]: Agencies (and their clients) require extensive demographic targeting options to deliver superior outcomes for efficient spend, but the volume of use for these high-precision targeting options varies widely by agency while the cost to produce these extensive demographic targeting options is a shared cost today. Example use case: an agency or a DMP has its own definition of base audience (beyond existing Geopath age/gender standard audience segments like P5+) and consequently cannot use reach/frequency metrics generated from the base audience definitions provided by Geopath. Today, agencies work around this problem with customized audience segment mappings and some specialized (agency-internal) tools.
[Low priority]: For place-based media, Agencies do not currently have a good way to compute the incremental reach and impression counts delivered when place-based inventory is combined with roadside or transit OOH ad units
[Low priority]: Agencies cannot currently track the progress of OOH/DOOH campaigns currently running on signage that has been audited by Geopath, thereby preventing the ability for OOH/DOOH campaign delivery commitments (in TRPs or audience impressions) to be independently verified.
[Lowest priority]: Proof of performance data, when available by OOH operators, is not captured by Geopath as an input that is automatically & independently used as an input to improve measurement precision.
Business Requirements for Enhanced Place-Based Measurement Solution:
[High priority]: For place-based measurement, weekly audience measures must represent actual, as-delivered ad exposures within a particular location, so as to demonstrate what OOH exposures occurred during a specific time period
[High priority]: For place-based measurement, extended demography at the person-level (specifically, by age/gender/household income) must be reportable to be comparable with digital/mobile phone ads
[High priority]: For place-based measurement, weekly audience measurement of ‘as delivered’ exposure is the minimum viable basis for reporting (hourly, by day, would be ideal), because advertisers are seeking to quantify the number of people and number of ad exposures, per unit (as well as ‘per network’, and ‘per venue’)
[High priority]: For place-based measurement, extended demography at the person-level (specifically, by age/gender/income) must be reportable to be comparable with digital/mobile ad measurement
[High priority]: For place-based measurement, the potential for ad exposures and the likely ad exposures must be reportable such that audience circulation metrics, opportunity-to-see metrics, and likelihood-to-see metrics can be compared by screen, by network (collections of screens), and by venue (place type), in order to provide a variety of success measures that can be used to sell an ad campaign
[High priority]: For place-based measurement, audience measures should include the reach and frequency (at the person-level) for audiences who are likely to see an OOH ad within a specific place
[High priority]: For place-based measurement, OOH audience measures (both forecasted and actual/as-delivered) should be consumable as a “flat file” (i.e. comma-separated value or CSV file) for specific selections of audience home geographic market, within a particular venue (or network, or screen), within a specific time period
[High priority]: For place-based measurement, OOH audience measures should be compatible with OOH audience measures used for other classes of OOH media (e.g., roadside media such as billboards, scheduled fleet media such as bus exterior ads, etc)
[High priority]: For place-based measurement, forecasted OOH audience measures should be consumable via an application protocol interface (i.e. an API) and a graphical user interface (GUI) that are available to both potential OOH buyers (for the purpose of socializing the audience exposure potential of place-based OOH inventory in national and local media buys) and other OOH sellers (for the purpose of evaluating the competitive landscape for a particular media type)
[Medium priority]: For place-based measurement, audience measures should include the reach and frequency (at the household level) for audiences who are likely to see an OOH ad within a specific place
[Medium priority]: For place-based measurement, the geographic homes of the audiences exposed to OOH ads (i.e. where the exposed audience lives) must be reportable by DMA and by County, so as to be compatible with local and national omni-channel ad campaigns that incorporate other forms of media
[Medium priority]: For place-based measurement, extended demography at the household-level (specifically, by age(s)-in-household/gender(s)-in-household/household income) should be reportable so as to be comparable with TV, OTT and CTV ad measurements
[Medium priority]: For place-based measurement, weekly audience measures should be available as future-oriented forecasts within a particular location so as to inform likely ad delivery outcomes for future ad campaigns
[Medium priority]: For place-based measurement, both forecasted and actual/as-delivered OOH audience measures should be consumable via an application protocol interface (i.e. an API) that is available to programmatic OOH platforms (e.g., Hivestack, Vistar, Place Exchange, etc) for the purpose of socializing the audience exposure potential of place-based OOH inventory in national and local media buys and tracking the OOH campaign’s progress against the stated objective as it is delivered over time
Design Principles:
Application of advanced audience targets and corresponding measures must use a standardized methodology for computing their projected confidence intervals for the inventory provided
The mechanism for data output anomaly detection must not prevent transacting on audience measures if data inputs remain within a tolerable range; instead, it must warn Geopath members of possible discrepancies relative to previous trends
The mechanism for data ingestion anomaly detection must not prevent the synthesis of new audience measures; instead, it must warn Geopath admins and/or the data input providers
The mechanisms to facilitate operator-provided proof-of-play data must capture different inputs with different cadences of transmission, based on DOOH vendor standards already established as technical paradigms for ‘proof of play’ (e.g., Broadsign) and using a standard Geopath format
Risks/Dependencies:
Sources of near-real-time mobile location data will evolve and likely change in its location precision and its scope of authorized use cases will likely change as well. Geopath must maintain a fault-tolerant method for reporting audience impressions, both forecasted and historical (with appropriate precision)
Data refreshes frequently have a deleterious impact on caching systems that are capturing audience measurement updates on a periodic/batched basis, creating complexity when ‘rolling 12+ month forecasts’ supersede previously-cached months at an unscheduled/intermittent data refresh cadence
Scope (of enhanced place-based measurement solution):
Enable weekly and monthly aggregations of OOH/DOH media measures on a rolling basis, for both forecasted and ‘as delivered’ outcomes (as input data becomes available)
Enable Geopath members to view forecasts of ‘opportunity to see’ impressions and ‘audience impressions' as well as ‘population circulation’ estimates within specific venues and for specific ad units within those venues (aggregated by network, by place, and by geography)
Enable Geopath members to view ‘as delivered’ estimates of ‘opportunity to see’ impressions and ‘audience impressions' as well as ‘population circulation’ estimates within specific venues and for specific ad units within those venues (aggregated by network, by place, and by geography)
Enable programmatic exchanges to view both ‘forecasted’ and ‘as delivered’ estimates of ‘opportunity to see’ impressions and ‘audience impressions' as well as ‘population circulation’ estimates within specific venues and for specific ad units within those venues (aggregated by network, by place, and by geography)
Enable Geopath members to access a comprehensive description of methodology
Enable Geopath members to access aggregate metrics from industry-leading data sources used in DOOH/OOH measurement
Enable Geopath Insights Suite users to view as delivered reach/impression estimates for OOH/DOOH media (based upon known trends/metrics that represent the ‘source of truth’ upon which the statistical model is based)
Enable OOH/DOOH operators to accelerate the creation of their ad campaign constructs (and proof-of-play constructs) within the Geopath database as well as its corresponding API and User Interface (the Geopath Insights Suite).
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