Route: now what happens?
It is just a month since we launched Route, the new audience measurement currency for the outdoor medium. It is reasonable to ask about the reception and the first reaction from the industry.
What has been the response? What have we learned? What has changed?
Route has been universally well received. People have noted that there are two elements – firstly a comprehensive audience measure for the medium, which secondly feeds from a unique and high quality consumer survey about behaviour and travel.
For the first time we are able to measure the medium from a single perspective, with independent industry-backed data. At present we have road, bus and tube, soon to be followed by rail and then retail and airport. It is enormously liberating to be able to take a holistic view of the media that are on offer and to craft detailed and relevant responses based on a single measure.
The agencies and clients that we have seen to date appreciate the scope and value of the outputs. Equally, they are often mesmerised by the complexity of project itself; the attention to detail and the thoroughness of the approach; the enormity of the ambition and the scale of information.
The second manifestation of the enterprise is that it rests on a large consumer study. This has prompted interest from academic institutions as well as from media companies beyond the immediate sphere of out-of-home and indeed from beyond our shores. Clearly there is a lot of information that might be integrated, merged, fused or whatever to create a mutual benefit.
This isn’t what we set out to do but it is a valuable and worthwhile demonstration of how surveys can be put to many uses. Indeed, of how they need to be dedicated to many uses now that the questions that we are charged to answer are ever more complex and the search for respondents is increasingly challenging.
What have we learned?
As ever, with a complex message to impart, there is a danger of misinterpretation or misunderstanding. It is important to communicate clearly and consistently. So far, we have been relatively untroubled in this respect bar a couple of misconstructions that I shall shamelessly use this column to correct.
On occasion, Route was unwittingly tagged with the sobriquet “big data”. With 19 billion GPS records alone, it is easy to see the temptation to attach some form of words to describe the project’s scale. I don’t really understand what the term means. Jargon would be my best guess. To be specific, Route rests on a wealth of information. A profusion of data gives a very clear picture. Think of screen images or photographs. The reward from the information is detail.
The other vexing point for some is the need to measure effectiveness. An audience currency such as Route does not attempt to do this per se. It seeks to identify contact with the medium. No more. That said, the outputs, when combined with other sources, are an invaluable element of any effectiveness work. In this respect, Route is a brick in the wall, not the wall.
What has changed?
Regardless of the fanfare, one does not expect a rapid change in the way that the outdoor industry operates. The hard work starts now.
The medium enjoys established and understood ways of planning and trading that won’t be upturned overnight. It takes time to access, order and understand new information. Businesses will wish to see what supports present practice and which elements might benefit from change.
Additionally, it will be a while before users know how they wish to access information, what they wish to evaluate and to devise the software infrastructure to support this.
Route is designed to support all parts of the media process; planning, trading, reporting and evaluating. Adoption will most likely favour some elements sooner than others. There is an immense amount of work for the poster community – to train, to process, to understand, to interpret and so on.
In many senses, the job has only just begun.