It’s a little black box that packs a global punch – AC Nielsen’s Npod, originally tested in South Africa and now destined to revolutionise outdoor advertising here and everywhere. The Npod is a breakthrough in technology and methodology that alters the way our world works.
Since late 2002, Nielsen Outdoor has been working with the SA Advertising Research Foundation (SAARF) and the outdoor industry in the United States to develop its audience measurement system, designed to overcome the problem of “accountability” in outdoor advertising. Accountability means bang for the buck – or how you prove to clients that their visual displays really do mean business: better exposure, more customer awareness, higher sales.
The Npod (standing for Nielsen Personal Outdoor Device) is a satellite-linked global positioning system (GPS) of the type used by explorers and soldiers to locate themselves on the earth’s surface. The device is carried by the consumer, either walking or in a vehicle. In Johannesburg in 2003, GPS boxes were installed in the car boots of 100 motorists to record each respondent’s position every 20 seconds.
Once data has been captured, very shrewd data analysis follows. By combining what is known of the respondent in terms of age, income, education and so on (demographics), along with maps of where outdoor displays appear along the routes followed by the respondent, the technology measures Opportunity to See (OTS). By adding information about the height, size and positioning of the outdoor display (using so-called Visibility Adjustment Indices or VAI), an improved measure of Likelihood to See (LTS) is derived and becomes the basis of outdoor media planning. This audience measurement system originated in 2002 in a partnership between AC Nielsen and a Seattle company, RDPA.
“We quickly realised that this was a global solution and SAARF had the foresight and vision to work with us to do the pilot in SA,” says Lorraine Hadfield, MD of Nielsen Outdoor, based in the US. If Hadfield and Nielsen have their way, the countless millions of eyes glancing at the billboards the world over will be counted, and their demographics known.
This has not been possible before, except through rather simplistic methods. These have involved counting traffic past outdoor displays and guesstimating the demographics of motorists passing along certain routes, rather than knowing their origins.
Now, with the Npod, viewers are randomly selected from the population and hence known for who they are. Nielsen has been able to establish that in Chicago, men aged 35-54 have the highest exposure to outdoor advertising, with the medium delivering particularly well against upper income, full-time employees.
Not surprisingly, SAARF have contracted with Nielsen to adopt the technology. As reported in the March issue of The Media, SAARF is set to become a world-leader when it launches a national electronic outdoor survey, due to run until 2008. It is intended to provide campaign strategists with data that can integrate the planning of outdoor and other media coverage.
Satellite monitoring of consumers is what market theorists call a “discontinuous innovation” – that is, one that disrupts previously settled habits in a sector of industry. This differs from incremental innovation, or the steady refinement of techniques. The Npod is a knowledge tool that embodies a new paradigm for outdoor research. It incorporates earlier traffic, mapping and visibility measurement tools but in doing so, it outdates them.
In the 1930s, Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter suggested that innovation is the heartbeat of capitalism. He dubbed it a kind of “creative destruction” that replaces the old with the new. The creative capital of a company, no less than that of a country, rests primarily on two types of knowledge: that of technological advancement, and, in parallel, marketing know-how.
As I found when writing The Competitive Edge: Lessons of South African Experience , we often imitate or adopt inventions from abroad. Then we take them further – as has been the case with cellphone marketing, in which SA has outstripped global models.
This country is often regarded as an ideal test laboratory for new technologies because we mix developed and developing markets and offer good infrastructure. So, in the case of the Npod, it may have been initiated abroad but its potential was quickly recognised here.
Outdoor planners, such as Dashni Naidu, marketing manager of Primedia Outdoor, are thrilled by the device and its implications: “It will generate a step-change in how outdoor is planned and performed, and thus how campaign effectiveness is managed,” she says. “It will enable outdoor media metrics to be more easily compared to, for example, television. This will drive more frequent selection of outdoor as a media strategy.”
The share of outdoor advertising in overall adspend in SA has been rising slowly but steadily over recent years, and was reported by Nielsen Media Research’s AIS/AdEx to be 4.7% in 2004. While certain types of outdoor ads reach over 75% of target adults (see graphic) it is still a fact that media planners remain somewhat sceptical of this medium because its reach and frequency are hard to ascertain.
Despite its apparent simplicity, outdoor advertising is an extremely complex form of media whose impact on audiences is difficult to observe, measure and report. To attract advertisers and viewers, SA outdoor designers and operators have made this into an extremely dynamic and creative medium. A glance at billboards flanking South Africa’s major city motorways and airports will yield startling mottos, like 94.7 FM’s famous message to hijackers: “Take the car, just leave the radio!”
In Britain and other developed countries, outdoor accounts for up to 9% of adspend. It is puzzling that in a developing country such as ours, where low literacy is a problem and outdoor communicates with largely visual stimuli, advertisers have still not gone for the medium in a big way.
Nothing would seem easier than sticking up a sign to get people to come to your show or buy your product. But, while outdoor advertising offers certain enormous advantages over other media – it creates awareness through short, high-visibility messages – it also has considerable disadvantages. These include limited exposure time, limited message, boredom (or “decay”) due to repeated viewings of the same displays, and consumer resistance to environmental defacement.
Outdoor and out-of-home messaging cover a huge variety of formats, remarks Naidu. Formats can range over digital and plasma displays, inflatable billboards, backlit panels, truck signage, blimps in the sky and ads on the backs of movie tickets.
At the cutting edge of product development is digital electronics, which promises to overturn old-style painted boards by using the power of lighting, colour, programming, and video. Moreover, digital gives far greater control over daily scheduling, allowing for the networking of multiple signage across large areas, and even tailoring the displays to suit weather and traffic conditions.
Digicams can be paired with signage to capture audience data such as numberplates and the eye movements of motorists paying attention to messages. This form of surveillance is no different in principle from observing and recording the preferences of shoppers.
“In the increasingly competitive media arena, clients are constantly looking for new ways to communicate with their target markets and innovation is ultimately rewarded with media bookings,” says Greg Benatar, regional director of Alliance Media in Johannesburg. The company is active in Africa, in countries like Ghana and Rwanda, which are now showing solid returns after years of pioneering work. The Suburb Sign has been Africa’s first stand-alone six-sheet poster and has given community benefit as well as a targeted medium to advertisers.
Africa today is evidently an innovation space. “We believe serious consideration needs to be given to townships,” says Dawn Rowlands, managing director of Integrator Outdoor, the country’s largest out-of-home agency. “These areas are totally misunderstood and undervalued by advertisers and media planners alike. Further to this it would appear as though more ideas are being developed for the LSM 9 and 10 market which is already so cluttered.”
Innovative taxi media in SA are promoting fashion such as Loxion Kulca (street slang for “location culture”). Adspend on both billboards and taxis is rising for HIV/Aids campaigns, education & training, and voter awareness.
The government has deregulated aspects of outdoor advertising to open up the landscape, while social campaigns and exciting urban lifestyles have injected life into a previously rather unattractive marketplace.
Against this background of innovations – most of which are aimed outwardly at audiences – the Npod is a high-tech solution for the inward problem of accountability to clients. The outdoor industry at home and abroad is united in the desire to adopt a single measurement standard. The research tool that was first tested in SA goes a long way towards making that a reality.
Graeme Addison is a former professor of communication and the author of several books on science, technology, business and innovation.
Space merchants
One thing airports offer is plenty of space. Large buildings, open halls, and interconnected roadways ensure that companies can place out-of-home ads in many visible positions. But it takes thinking out of the box to keep the advertising always fresh and to outwit the competition.
Debbie Lea, one of the all-women team of four running Airport Media, formed in 2002, says innovation is built into client offerings. “We constantly review new concepts presented to us. The answer to a great airport campaign is to blend a bit of old with a bit of new, traditional/trendy. It is not necessarily the vehicle that has to constantly change but it is the direction in which it drives that can make the difference!”
The company imports state of the art wave-action and scroller units from Europe. It studies international airports worldwide for media options that can be used in South Africa. An example is the large format advertising at Johannesburg International Airport which is precision printed and flighted directly onto the fascia of the terminal building – Airbus, Vodacom, Etihad Airlines and Jamesons are currently advertising at the airport in this manner.
The drivers in innovation are both clients and the media owners. The latter are always on the lookout for new ways to depict messages in order to secure the advertiser’s budget. “These factors provide for healthy competition and a dynamic market within which both advertiser and media owner can operate,” says Lea.