Last week Billboard Insider ran articles by Terry Carmody and Jim Lyke talking about the importance of impressions in selling out of home. Today we talk with Chris Cowlbeck, IBOUSA Chief Vision Officer, about what the IBO is doing to make impressions available to independent billboard companies.
Chris, you recently returned from NYC Digital Signage Week. What did you learn?
Carving out the time to attend these types of events is always a challenge but the random meetings and conversations with the folks that buy us are ever so rewarding. I’ve been enough times now that I’m recognized and new people are asking me about our IBO Speedway footprint and connecting. My biggest takeaway was that we are on the right track to honing into tighter and better data surrounding our locations and very important is the ease of access, contracting, and performance. Impressions are how the $300 billion pie buys advertising and while it’s a monumental task to deliver our IBO inventory stats to them in a consistent manner, it’ll pay off. PepsiCo presented a hard-hitting session on how they have shifted their focus toward OOH, and revealed how they used their own proprietary data along with other OOH metrics to target specific areas they wanted to see how their Bubbly sales would respond – it was extremely valuable to see specifically what they did. They were astounded by how well OOH performed and now targeting more budget to OOH. It doesn’t take much imagination to expect that other advertisers are testing the same things and swapping war stories behind the scenes. OOH dollars go up and those prepared get a bite of the pie!
What are the options right now for an independent out of home company to get impressions?
There are quite a few companies that provide an array of different data, some using localized equipment like cameras and signal capture while others use mobile data aggregated by companies that can provide specific objectives, and it’s very very confusing, one to understand, two to implement technically (cost and scale) and three believability and transparency. You’ve quoted me before in saying that I’ve been looking for the equivalent of rubber snakes in the road that could be deployed 10,000 times fast, and that’s now been a decade-long quest of mine to provide our “independently” run company data in one fashion that buyers would appreciate on scale. This is also why IBOUSA is a member of the Media Rating Council and where I have sat on many dozens of data product audits during their accreditation process and why IBOUSA will support any service that attains MRC accreditation. Today there are no accredited services to provide impressions for OOH as the MRC OOH standard is in its final throes of being published, and I expect a few companies will seek that accreditation to win the allegiance of the buying community and confidence of the media owners. To specifically answer this question requires a perspective that the companies like PepsiCo mentioned above, use their own internal soup and access to data, at a rather large cost. The only real service that has been broadly understood to be accepted by the buying community has been GeoPath, until recently, where the programmatic supply-side platform PlaceExchange introduced a product PerView for some large buyers who had asked for it. Over a year ago I discovered this may be an option, and like many other knock knocks I get, I opened the door, and it is an exciting one, especially because they will be seeking MRC accreditation when the OOH Standard is published. I have also personally confirmed usage of the PerView service with large agencies and programmatic buyers, which while they remain anonymous for political reasons, I expect will become public when PerView MRC accreditation is achieved. Another great industry service that PlaceExchange is providing for IBO Speedway, is the piping of the hourly data directly with other programmatic platforms we have agreements with.
What is the IBO doing to make impressions data available to its members?
We’ve been both blessed and cursed with our large co-op footprint of about 100,000 OOH displays in that the size gives us a nice scale into which solid business arrangements can be executed at affordable prices, but at a cost of supporting the stray-cat nature of the origination of all the data. I am really excited about how our IBO Speedway has been able to work through these challenges and we are nimble enough to be able to flex as new technology entered the scene, such as BillboardPlanet Equinox EPIX system, PerView impressions, and Cuende MetricOOH satellite penetration data which we will be combining all together with the help of the Goldfish Ads demographic data platform that has made a special IBO Dashboard Letterman-style User Interface that will be friendly for both our most demanding and also our just-the-bottom line seeking members, large or small, at a price point that will pay for the service by having accurate pricing.
IBO Goldfish demographics is available now in Beta mode, and we have the first round of PerView data Beta testing now as well and anticipate a few more weeks until it will be available in the field. Cuende MetricOOH should follow in the first quarter of 2023 and will be a creative new look at evaluating our locations that we know the buying side will enjoy. This has been an expensive endeavor for IBO to tackle but we are excited that the cost can be shared ratably by a price per face equally across all the membership, at deep discounts, and at prices that any budget can afford, with access simply by being a member of IBOUSA.
About IBO Speedway
The IBO COOP Speedway is a cloud-based set of data solutions and technology “tools” that enable our IBO Marketing team to aggregate inventory information from just about any source and deliver data to just about any buyer or operator in any fashion.
IBO Marketing has grown to over 270 companies with about a 100K face footprint and uniquely functions on a break-even basis to represent the IBO Associates as a cooperative manager, much like a rural electricity or water co-op. Our centralized technical effort enables a one-stop functionality for buying interests whether automation-assisted, programmatic, or the good old-fashioned manual way.
For more information contact Becky Smith, IBOUSA Enterprise Manager via email becky@IBOUSA.org or call the office for immediate attention, 580-226-2234.
[wpforms id=”9787″]
Paid Advertisement
