We’ve received several responses to Sean Reilly talks about Geopath,  Kevin Gleason Speaks Out on Geopath  and Geopath Financial Difficulties.

OOH Capital Partner Stephen Freitas says new Geopath governance is needed

If data isn’t provided in a way useful to brands, they won’t use it. Geopath and the OOH industry have evolved data modeling over time to meet changing demands. But, it’s not enough.  Keep the parts of Geopath with value, perhaps with a new governance approach. The fact is brands today don’t really care about third-party impartiality as much as they care about analyzing the right data that fits their needs. Where they get it is less important.The industry should consider outsourcing measurement functions to commercial enterprises where it makes sense, while leaning into MRC accreditation as a guidepost. Ensure the industry is measuring the right things like cohorts not locations. Transact using real-time data to support optimization and attribution objectives. Willingly pay more for the right measurement approach and alignment to foster omnichannel compatibility.

An independent out of home exec says local advertisers don’t focus on impressions.

We don’t use it and have never considered it. Most of our customers are locally owned and are only interested in how many cars go by the sign daily. When we even start to introduce measures such as DEC they get confused! All of the eyes on impressions and other information really start to muddy the waters. When we get RFPs from national agencies now they have so much what I feel is unnecessary information that I wonder who is behind these requests.

Another independent exec says go back to basics.

OOH measurements have been a mess ever since we got away from DEC. Yes, DEC’s could have been improved but what followed was nothing but smoke and mirrors. Now we have exceptionally good and reputable companies reporting impressions with 0+ populations. Folks, we need to get back to basics.

An east coast out of home exec thinks a transfer to OAAA doesn’t make sense.

How does bringing it under OAAA provide better measurement at a reduced cost?Imagine the amount of money the OAAA will spend on consultants to do this / and the re-education marketing campaigns to retrain the entire industry and advertisers about this switch.  Nobody has the capacity to go thru that…lot of fear about the unknown to what the other side looks like.

An independent out of home exec wants Geopath to change pricing

I pay $_____ a year, but the platform is cumbersome. I still have no clear understanding of how they measure anything. The only reason I keep paying is that some agencies require their data. Their pricing model also seems illogical—why base it on a percentage of revenue? Why not $100 per location or whatever?

Another out of home exec wonders why the Geopath loss wasn’t addressed sooner

When I look at their financials, I have to ask myself, “what has the Geopath Board been doing the last several years?”  That includes, most notably, the seat at the table that Lamar has, as either a board member or likely the largest client.  In 2022, it must have been clear that the Motionworks contract was going to nearly triple in size, while revenue growth was forecast to grow low single digits.  Who stood up and said “wait a damn minute, this expense increase will cripple the organization, beginning in 2023.  It will be an insurmountable expense increase.” That was 2.5 years ago.”

Olympic Media Consultancy’s Tony Jarvis says Geopath should keep it’s Eyes-on metric

The evolving attention-based media audience planning and buying world is now embraced by most major brand advertisers and their media agencies.  Based on GeoPath’s “Eyes-On” weekly target audience reach for a campaign, OOH is almost impossible to beat.  Together with brilliant creative executions whether classic or digital, GeoPath non-discountable metrics are OOH’s key to ensuring inescapable leverage to delivering advertiser outcomes and consequently to optimizing its share of campaign spend.   It is important to remember that most OOH JICs Globally deliver “Eyes-On” metrics (or Visibility Adjusted Contacts) based on the WOO’s “Global OOH Audience Measurement Guidelines”, May 2022, which were shamefully ignored in the farcical MRC “OOH Out-of-Home Measurement Standards, Phase 1 – Exclusive of Audience” released in April 2024, despite sound objections from the research cognoscente AND the then President of GeoPath.

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