By Glyn Williams, CEO, Skies Above Media

Our industry has been talking about OOH measurement for decades. Yes. Decades. When I first started in the OOH industry in 2002 my manager explained DECs to me but said the industry was working on revising the impressions modeling. We then officially began using “Eyes On” around 2008. The idea we’re still debating it more than 15 years later – with some saying we should scrap the whole thing and go backward to DECs – is just mind boggling.

Every other media channel has moved past establishing audience currency and has focused on ROI, engagement, attribution and a deeper analysis of the data. And surely, every other media channel’s audience currency has its flaws, but they have worked through them, and we will do the same.

I’m an OOH purist at heart, but I am also a capitalist. We must find ways to elevate the industry toward growth as a whole and reliable, believable data that marries other media will get us there. If powerful numbers are perceived as just made up, then the data is just noise on a page.

As an industry we’ve always rallied behind changes that create revenue opportunities. We all standardized our billing calendars from 12 month – 13 periods to seamlessly marry other media channels while also giving media operators one more month to sell. We’ve heavily invested time and energy into digital expansion to eliminate barriers of entry on long timelines, expanding our reach to a larger client base while also creating more space to sell. We must apply the same growth mindset regarding audience currency.

Anyone who is in the business of generating revenue – whether that’s on the agency side or media operator side – has to listen to their clients. They’re telling us what to do, we just have to go do it. At every OOH conference I’ve been to there’s been a panel of brand CMOs or heads of investment from agency HoldCos all saying that we have to nail down audience currency and data. As far back in 2013 the head of media for one of the top OOH spenders stood up and said “you all have to get out of your own way!”

They’ve said we have to prioritize getting it right. We have to be consistent with other media channels so that the data can marry with the tools and platforms they use, it has to be data that be used to create insights for their media planners and decisions makers, and it has to be realistic and believable – or just simply properly vetted.

Prior to 2020, Skies Above Media’s assets were not Geopath audited. The company leadership prior to me was heavily skeptical of the relevance of the impressions and didn’t see the return on investment of the fees. Coming from the agency-side I held a different view. Adding a Geopath number was like a seal of approval and allowed us to be considered in the same context as our competitors.  Since then, we nearly doubled the volume of clients with we’ve done business and increased our overall revenue significantly.

Listen. Listen. Listen. Our clients have given us the roadmap. We just have to follow their advice and get out of our own way.

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