Photo courtesy Titan Canada
Following a two-year investigation into the mobility of Canadian consumers, the Canadian Out-of-Home Measurement Bureau (COMB) has released the results of its newest research, undertaken in an effort to increase its precision in measuring the public’s exposure to billboards and other outdoor ads in terms of ‘gross rating points’ (GRPs).
COMB’s studies show people living outside Canada’s three largest cities travel into them an average of four days per week. In fact, these people drive further within the cities than residents do, which means their potential exposure to out-of-home (OOH) advertising is higher.
Forum Research conducted the travel studies on COMB’s behalf between September 2011 and June 2012 within the census metropolitan areas (CMAs) of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, along with their surrounding regions, up to a distance of 100 km (62 mi). Over nine-day periods, 600 study participants carried Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking devices.
The key objective of these studies was to better understand how people—including both residents and non-residents—travel in Canada’s three largest urban areas. In particular, COMB wanted to determine whether or not the OOH advertising industry should continue to exclude non-residents’ exposure to outdoor ads when calculating GRPs. The Canadian OOH industry established this exclusion as a practice decades ago, when it first began to use GRP metrics to report the ‘reach’ of ad campaigns.
Using GPS technology, which is both passive and accurate, was one of the keys to the new studies, capturing the participants’ movement every two seconds. COMB says it was the first time this GPS-based approach has been taken in OOH measurement anywhere in North America—and promises to use it more in the future to gain further insight.
“GPS technology has been able to demonstrate how non-residents have heavy exposure to the cities’ outdoor ads, due to their frequent travel within the city boundaries,” explains Karen Best, president of Toronto-based COMB. “Both residents and non-residents are legitimate and valuable potential customers. Together, they make up the real audience to be measured, with a modern media metric.”
In both the Toronto and Montreal CMAs, approximately 92 per cent of traffic comprised residents and frequently visiting (i.e. four days or more per week) non-residents. For Vancouver, the figure was 91 per cent.
Data from the studies has been analyzed, discussed and debated by experts at the six OOH companies and 10 ad agencies represented by COMB’s research committee and board of directors. There was unanimous approval of allowing the frequent-visitor non-residents to be included in future GRP metrics.
“The new research methodology for determining the percentage of non-residents eligible to contribute to the outdoor GRP calculations—known as the ‘in-market’ factor—is derived from current and reliable research that advertisers and their agencies can trust,” says Richard Ivey, senior vice-president (SVP) of customer service for Media Experts, who chairs COMB’s research committee. “This research is vital to accurate reporting of ad campaign reach and impressions.”
The new Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver data has been incorporated into COMB’s media planning software. Additional markets, yet to be announced, will be studied in 2013 and beyond.
