5 Reasons Why You Should Be a Geopath Member

by Amber Larkins, OOH Today

If you aren’t using Geopath and you’re at all involved in the OOH industry you are probably using Geopath indirectly through your agency partners. But more and more organizations are working with Geopath as we reported earlier this week.

Why is Geopath important? Why should more organizations seek memberships?

“Our purview is to measure the OOH industry and audit. That is all we do. We are not-for-profit and we want to do what is right,” said Scott Fiaschetti, Geopath Executive of Operations, Marketing & Client Partnerships. 

Geopath has been providing measurements for the OOH industry since the Great Depression. They have several different types of members, with media owners making up about 2/3rds of users and agencies and advertisers making up the other third. Why are so many brands, agencies, and media owners turning to Geopath? Why should you be using Geopath?  Here are five reasons:

1. OOH Presence

The biggest media owner Geopath membership benefit is having audited inventory. Geopath allows planners to look at over 1.5 million pieces of inventory in a single stop.

“If you are not on the map people won’t know you are there. We can help any media owner large or small to make sure their inventory shows up on the map. You never know why someone’s looking or what they are looking for. Being part of the ecosystem is incredibly important,” said Dylan Mabin, Geopath President. 

Many agencies almost exclusively use Geopath data. For media owners it provides more eyes on their inventory– and more potential buyers. If you are a media owner and don’t have a Geopath membership, then you are missing out on an opportunity for media planners to easily find your inventory. 

2. OOH Data

Geopath provides audited measurements and data to the industry. When media owners, operators, advertisers and agencies use 3rd party metrics, it helps to build trust in the data.

Geopath can provide valuable information about OOH inventory. It audits OOH inventory including transportation, engineering, mobile, traffic volume on roadways and foot traffic at different place-based venues.

Some members pay for a license to use Geopath data themselves through Geopath’s native tools, while others pay to license the data and use it in their own software systems. Geopath provides measurement and data to the industry. Members can leverage the data to make decisions, using a common metric from a single source to understand a campaign’s expected performance. This information can help them in campaign planning to understand audience metrics, and impressions, reach, and frequency. For media owners, it can help them set their rates and rate cards.

3. OOH Tools

In addition to having tools that users can directly use, the larger media organizations often integrate Geopath data directly into their own applications. Geopath provides valuable industry tools to their users including: 

• Geopath Learning Lab
• Geopath Insights Suite
• Inventory Explorer

4. OOH Voice

Some Geopath users only have an associate membership, which doesn’t provide them with a license to the data, but it does give them a seat at the table on committees and a voice in important industry discussions regarding measurement methodology, including the recent MRC request for input. Though they don’t license the data, they are still involved with what Geopath does. No matter the size of your company, if you have an associate membership, then you are invited to be on committees and take part in discussions around measurement methodologies.

5. OOH Consistency

With questions around OOH standards, definitions, and terminology, there is a need for OOH advertisers and media owners to become more aligned and consistent. This is something that Dylan Mabin has written about recently for OOH Today. Geopath helps enable OOH industry professionals to have consistent conversations that build more trust and confidence in the numbers. As we move increasingly towards omnichannel marketing strategies and advertisers expecting analytics similar to what they can get for their digital marketing efforts – having consistent trustworthy methodologies that get us closer to real-time data will help to build more faith in the industry. Though Geopath is mostly for planning purposes, the data is often used by other parties to assist in attribution. 

These are just five reasons to consider a Geopath membership, but there are certainly other benefits.  To apply for membership email larryhennessy@geopath.org.

What are your thoughts? Share them in the comments below.