Out of Home Measurement Council (OMC) plans for 2020

By Trish Guilford, General Manager of the OMC

2020 is definitely a year to look forward to for the OMC.   We have started the year off with a bang – literally!   We have ten new members who have been uploaded onto our software, Quantum, bringing the number of roadside panels for the industry to plan against and to get results for to over 7 800!  In fact we have more than 8 600 panels on the software, but many of these are potential panels in development or are panels that are taken on long term contracts and the media owners do not want people to constantly request these panels. In total we have eighteen members – an amazing jump from the initial four founding members, to eight and now to eighteen!

The ten new members are all small media owners with between 7 and 110 panels each. Their joining as members will no doubt put a very positive spin into the market place and will illustrate to the industry that no matter how large or small a company is, our research is beneficial to all.

When looking at driving memberships in 2020, we are certain that we will onboard at least another five (5) media owners, however we continue to interact with as many media owners as we possibly can to get them to become members.   We introduced a new membership costing structure in July 2019 which significantly assists the small to medium sized media owners to come on board.   These new membership rates are based on a “pay per panel” structure which allows media owners with up to 500 panels to chose how many panels they would like to include in the software and pay for only those panels. These new rates are extremely favourable and have been received well in the industry.  Of course, there are still those doubting Toms, but with more and more clients and agencies favouring OMC members, as media metrics can be supplied for panels utilised, we do believe our estimation is conservative.

From a usage of the data perspective, the Quantum software is available through Telmar Media Services.  We currently have 30 software users which includes media owners as well as media agencies and clients.    The OMC and Telmar are putting emphasis on the media agencies to get more users of the software.  Not only can panels be evaluated via the Quantum software, but our rich Travel Survey is available through Survey Time which allows strategic analyses to be done, vital in a time when we have little detailed OOH research available through the ES.

Our travel survey is conducted by Ask Afrika and is a random stratified sample representing All Adults aged 15+.   We target areas that have a population of 8 000+ which we classify as urban and peri-urban areas.  The ROAD research is in field for 11 months of the year, January through to end November with a total of 15 000 intensive face to face interviews being conducted.   The interviewers capture all trips taken over the past 7 days and every single trip is checked to make sure that they are valid and possible.   We then fuse three years of data to give us a rolling minimum sample of 45 000.   Our fused data over the three year period gives us results for close on 550 000 trips.  When these are weighted up to the population, this equates to approximately 295 million trips over the period!  Only once you start using the data and doing deep dives, do you come across amazing statistics such as these.

Our next release which will be 2016/17/18 data is scheduled for April 2020 and we will advise the industry as soon as it is available.

Our most exciting project for 2020 will be the implementation of analysing digital out of home panels (DOOH).    Worldwide, the evaluation and working out of the reach of DOOH is an issue with people taking the total reach of a panel or a traffic count and dividing this by the number of ads in the advertising loop.  This is not accurate as travel speeds, dwell times, and a number of other criteria need to be taken into account when working out an accurate result.     Kuper Research has been working tirelessly for the past three months to investigate all avenues on how we can get all the pieces of the puzzle.   We are ecstatic to advise that by the end of March we will have an interim, manual solution, to work out individual DOOH panel results.    The view of course is to have the algorithm built into the Quantum software but at least we are keeping up with the rest of the world in this area of research.

Should you be interested in finding out more about becoming a member of the OMC, or media agencies who do OOH planning and would like to see the research and the Quantum software please contact us and we will be more than happy to engage with you.

Trish Guilford can be contacted via email at  trish@omcsa.org.za

About the Outdoor Measurement Council

The OMC (Out of Home Measurement Council) is a non-profit Joint Industry Committee that has been incorporated to provide buyers of Out of Home Media with a currency and survey that allows for efficient and accurate OOH planning.  It produces consolidated, inclusive and representative research covering the key OOH formats, commencing with Static Roadside panels in South Africa including the panels from all Out of Home participating Media Owners.  The JIC aims to market and grow the OOH advertising industry within South Africa.