this MRC standard turns the medium’s metrics upside down and inside out and takes OOH measurement back more than 20 years
This is a reprinted version of a story authored and submitted to us by Tony Jarvis, which first appeared yesterday April 29 in Media Daily News here⇒https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/395616/in-dissent.html?c=175699#reply
In Dissent
by Tony Jarvis, Proprietor & Research Architect at Olympic Media Consultancy. Op-Ed Contributor for MediaDailyNews.
On April 22, a Media Rating Council (MRC) out-of-home (OOH) media measurement working group – of which I am a member in dissent – approved a final version of Phase 1 of the council’s “OOH Measurement Standards – Exclusive of Audience” with some additional inadequate changes.
“Exclusive of audience?” In 2024? You read that correctly. Bizarre, right?
Developed over the past five years, first, it is unequivocally not a standard. It has had an extremely stormy passage from the working group, which is comprised of OOH advertising and media research “experts, from whom the MRC requests confidentiality. It was released late Friday.
Media research experts advised that this MRC standard turns the medium’s metrics upside down and inside out and takes OOH measurement back more than 20 years, because it fails to embrace the recognized “Global Audience Measurement Guidelines” established by the World Out-of-Home Organization (WOO), 2022.
Geopath, and its soon-to-be former President Dylan Mabin, was part of the international group that developed the WOO’s guidelines, which were based on ESOMAR’s (European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research) 2009 “Global Guidelines for OOH Audience Measurement.” I was a member of that group.
This MRC standard essentially takes OOH back to the days of using distribution/circulation and very basic opportunity-to-see, OTS, data for planning and buying the medium, using definitions and derivations that are ill-defined, confused, contradictory and inconsistent.
It also ignores OOH’s globally-accepted currency: visibility adjusted contacts (VAC) or eyes-on based on real audience measurement, which is planned to be part of the MRC’s Phase 2. To be delivered in another five years?
Consequently, this MRC document is considered not only flawed, but out-of-step with measurement and metrics for other media including TV, Cinema, Print, audio, etc.
As such, any accreditations earned based on these standards would be specious, i.e., B.S.
Full disclosure: my company, Olympic Media Consultancy, requested to be explicitly recognized in the document under the heading, “In Dissent.”
This entire MRC process points to the prospect of multiple OOH currencies – possibly on either viewable impressions (no OTS), or opportunity-to-see, or even likelihood-to-see – but all “exclusive of audience.” Is this undercurrent aimed at replicating the U.S. TV/video JIC’s (so called) push to certify multiple currencies and the chaos and confusion it has created?
Is this move by the MRC due to its ignorance, notably regarding OOH media research, or is it part of another palace coup by the Out-of-home Advertising Association of America (OAAA).
After five years, why the shameful rush to approve this latest bizarre version of the MRC OOH standard?
One: The OAAA annual conference opens today, and it provides a unique opportunity to conveniently fast-track a flawed, brutally confusing, inconsistent and misguided measurement standard for the OOH industry.
Two: Larger numbers will drive out smaller numbers (eyes-on) for the sellers despite the significantly higher value of eyes-on metrics and their critical value to media buyers and advertisers.
OOH has led the media industry with its eyes-on metric, a prerequisite (pre-processing requirement) for attention, for more than 20 years. The medium’s measurement and metrics leadership were lauded by none other than Lumen Research CEO Mike Follett.
Euan McKay, Chief Strategy Officer of the U.K.’s Route Research Ltd., in my opinion correctly, castigated the MRC in several opinion pieces over the past couple of years.
Use of Geopath’s eyes-on metrics has helped emphasize the real value of OOH advertising from the low CPMs generated by the distribution/circulation and basic opportunity-to-see data used by OOH media buyers 20 years ago which incurred heavy discounting. Such discounting by the media agencies will surely return based on these new MRC standards.
Eyes-on versus some “content rendered impression” measure has never been so important for OOH in the current era of attention metrics now being used for other major media to estimate actual ad exposure by a brand’s target group.
If the industry embraces the MRC standard, I believe it will adversely affect any chance of OOH increasing its current 4% share of ad spend in the US.
Sadly, it comes at a time of exciting new OOH digital and format innovations and creativity being delivered by this incredible, eyes-on, advertising reach medium.
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