Teenagers actually notice digital signs in malls
July 24, 2007 by Dave Haynes
It’s always heartening to see positive research results from digital signage installs out in the field.
First, good results help us all. Second, somebody actually saw the greater good of letting others in on the results (still rare, it seems).
In this case, the mall ad company AdSpace has released some results of measurement done with Nielsen this spring.
From AdAge:
The Out of Home Video Advertising Bureau (OVAB), an organization of digital outdoor companies, is currently working with its agency partners to develop a solid metric for later this year.
But AdSpace, a mall advertising company currently in 75 upscale malls throughout the country, got a jump on its fellow OVAB members in April when it partnered with Nielsen on a study that would provide more detailed ad-engagement data. The study aims to show how many people are watching the ads, and for how long.
For AdSpace, it turned out to be 47% of all mall traffic, a good portion of which is comprised of its target teen audience. Of those 47% traffic views, the average person viewed an ad 3.3 times, a number significantly more accurate than previous studies could have recorded, said Bill Ketchum, exec VP-chief marketing officer.
“It’s so easy to say I just don’t believe it, and then that gets into a difficult conversation because how do you prove it?” he said. “Once we had the Nielsen data it didn’t seem to be a big issue [for clients.]”
[…] AdAge via the sixteen:nine blog: according to the study, apparently 47% of people (quite a few of whom are teenagers) […]
But what’s the recall rate on the ads? Do the teens actually remember them or do they just filter them out like TV ads?
SeeSaw Networks also recently commisioned a research through OTX – an engagement analytics research company – across mulitple categories of digital signage adverising that indicates very high awareness of digital signage amongst teens.
The same study also indicates that teens also have a high propensity to take action as a result of seeing digital signage advertising. These actions include visiting a website, purchasing a product among other actions.
SeeSaw’s CEO, Peter Bowen published an article in February that states some of the topline results from this study. You can read the article at:
http://www.seesawnetworks.com/2007/02/07/out-of-home-digital-media-has-emerged/
sigh….
Bill and Dave from minicom kinda started this jab and Dave and I discussed briefly last night (although i’m not implicating them in my opinions).
I hate to say it as everyone seems to be shying away from this topic for fear of corporate retribution and because they need the push but paid for research is non credible to buyers but unfortunately necessary to pump up the space and the company(ies) running it. The average “discount rate” that marketers put on these types of numbers is 30-50% if you’re lucky (e.g. 54% of viewers recognized the screens and ads is taken as 18%). No one takes partisan research seriously in the profession of market research if you’re a marketer (disclaimer: 2 of my friends run North American Research firms so I’m not basing this on opinon and had a conversation on this exact topic 3 weeks ago with a buyer and am kinda quoting him)
Everyone kinda knows it and no one says it but if you were XYZ Research Company and somebody paid you 100K for a report to say you’re great would you issue a negative report???
what’s more disconcerting is that everyone has to drop 50-150K for a research report that no one puts heart in but no one will speak out against but everyone needs to succeed – gotta love the necessary evil and the barrier to entry
I’ve read SeeSaw’s and PRN’s and Broadsigns, etc, etc. reports and many more and they generally relate the same thing. What I have been MOST impressed with is some of the independant studies, non-affiliated with networks and or out of educational institutions (with no proven hook to a network or ad firm) on a more holistic basis, that have started to come out recently that speak with positive action on “segments of network types”.
There are some great numbers that start to come out of this space but, as I’ve run into in the past, when there’s a 40% discrepancy in numbers between 2 reports that I’ve read in the same STORE, you’ve got to start to stand up and ask for a standard in qualitative measurement or ask about the methodology behind it
I’m sure I’m going to get skewered or frowned upon for the above but it’s a major detriment to our collective sales….just like the issues TV is dealing with right now
“The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify.”
– Darrell Huff, author of How to Lie with Statistics