Intersection Deepens DOOH Data Insights, Expands Into New Ad Categories

Measuring the value of out of home (OOH) has become much more robust than it once was, making it an even more vital part of media plans. That’s according to Bella Nguyen, Director of Media Data Solutions at Intersection, which offers more than 400,000 digital and static OOH assets nationwide.

Nguyen oversees the company’s data and attribution efforts, including brand awareness, foot traffic, digital event measurement, moving media measurement and a new initiative involving the pharma vertical.

Intersection leverages all aspects of OOH measurement, including both established currencies (such as location measurement from Geopath) and strategic partnerships that add a range of capabilities — so advertisers can gain deeper insights about the types of people who have seen their ads and how the ads prompt different behaviors.

“We can measure [various] attribution studies,” Nguyen explained. “One example is website visitation. We’ve done a lot in the last year with different types of brands. We’re able to pixel the brand’s pages and see, based on the exposure, Did [a consumer] go to the website? Did they go to a booking-confirmation page? It depends on the KPI [key performance indicator] the brand is looking to answer.”

Furthering that insight, Intersection can measure foot traffic with campaigns that involve moving media. “We had a case study with a financial bank that’s pretty well known in the city of Chicago,” she said. “We were able to measure people who were exposed to the ad and if they actually went to those bank locations.”

Intersection is also exploring and expanding its range of category-specific measurement for sectors like consumer packaged goods and pharma, tapping into sales data. That is something that’s been available in other media sectors, but not in OOH, until now, Nguyen noted.

For pharma-related campaigns, Intersection can measure if someone was exposed to a campaign, then answer such questions as, Did they actually go to a healthcare provider who prescribed that specific drug? If not that drug, did it still drive visitation to a healthcare provider? “We’re super excited to begin answering these category-specific questions that we haven’t been able to before,” she said.

Historically, OOH was only able to measure static media. “Anything that was a fixed location,” Nguyen explained. “Out of home has evolved and isn’t stopping anytime soon. With moving media, our partners can help us track the GPS data from vehicles, which are publicly available by the transit authorities.

“Our bus measurement vendor, StreetMetrics, is able to create viewsheds based on the GPS data and actually see if there was a device ID that was exposed to that bus at that given time,” she continued. “I’ve worked for major news networks and music streaming companies that naturally had all of this data already. But now we have it for out of home, too.”

People generally associate large formats with billboards. But they can also be found on moving media, particularly on exterior buses, Nguyen noted. “What’s really special about that is that [buses are] moving throughout our cities, which expands the reach,” she said.

Intersection has observed 123 million miles driven, year over year across nine major markets. “When you think about that number, it is super impactful for reach,” Nguyen added. “We have observed more than 22 billion moving-media impressions just in our major markets looking back the last year. That is a really strong outcome.”

The data Intersection culls from all its platforms offers a variety of uses. “From a baseline, we can measure impressions, miles driven, frequency and the amount of time someone is exposed to the ad,” she said. It culls demographic data based on household census blocks. “Then if someone is looking to really measure the effectiveness of the campaign and has a certain KPI [key performance indicator], we have the attribution solutions in place to help answer those questions for both static and digital media.”

An intriguing case study involved a teeth-aligners brand. “Their KPI was to drive visitation to the website,” Nguyen recalled. “The client wanted to see if people went to their website and then actually ended up going to a booking page for an appointment or to purchase the aligners. Their secondary KPI was to test multiple creatives on digital platforms.” Knowing that Intersection was able to also test multiple creatives, Intersection ran four versions of the creative on buses, and at the end of the campaign, it broke out the visitation results for each, helping the client determine which version was most effective.

“The client ended up swapping out their creative mid-campaign, taking our recommendations, and included a larger call to action to go on the website,” she said. “The results for the second study were just as effective, if not more.”

The OOH measurement that’s available today will only get richer. “People are going to be able to measure their entire out of home media plan and package in digital, TV or radio and understand the overall effectiveness because the data available in OOH will match the ad industry standard,” she added.

“These metrics are not just going to be for people like me or data analysts,” Nguyen concluded. “It’s going to be for sales folks. It’s going to be for client success teams. It could be for the creative teams. It’s definitely going to be a tool [that goes] beyond just measurement and attribution.”

Source: Charlene Weisler