Outdoor advertising, unlike other distribution channels, requires special criteria for assessing its effectiveness. Until recently, on Russian market there was no clearly defined program for this. Some still decided to invest in outdoor advertising, but many “were afraid to spend money on who knows what.”

Once it became clear that the success of promotion in the market depends on the location of the advertising message, preference was no longer given only to those streets along which the customer or the advertiser himself drives. Accordingly, the main question for those involved in placement and performance assessment outdoor advertising, began to sound like this: “who will see this advertisement?”

Consequently, the target audience is all people who pass or drive past it. And the first indicator, which to one degree or another can reflect the effectiveness of outdoor advertising, is the potential audience. In other words, this is “the number of potential advertising contacts (the number of people who have the opportunity to see this outdoor advertising per unit of time - day, week or month).” The measurements take into account all the main components of the potential audience, namely:

· personal vehicles;

· public transport;

· pedestrians.

It should be noted that with the help of special coefficients, indicators for the coefficients of motor transport and public transport are reduced to the number of people.

Let's consider an example of a study aimed at studying the effectiveness of outdoor advertising. This study was carried out in the UK in the 1980s by OSCAR New Blend. The goal was to obtain the following indicators:

1) fame and recognition of the brand;

2) frequency of brand purchases;

3) trust in the brand (loyalty);

The result of such studies can be to identify how specific advertising influenced the promotion of the product as a whole. As a result, a database is formed that allows further forecasting of the advertising effectiveness of a particular product.

In St. Petersburg, GALLUP SPb in 1996 used a similar methodology to evaluate the effectiveness of outdoor beer advertising. A survey of respondents was conducted at the locations of the posters and at the nearest gas stations; the sample was 400 people (at 20 randomly selected points). The main conclusions that were obtained during the campaign: brand awareness increased, the image of the advertised product improved, and 19% of respondents were able to remember the poster.

The second indicator that we will consider is the size of the audience reach (OTS - “opportunity to see”) - the size of that part of the audience that has the practical opportunity to see this advertisement. Below are a number of characteristics for assessing this criterion:

· rotation angle;

· transport position;

· distance to traffic lights;

· width of the roadway;

· visibility distance;

Competing designs

Obstructions to view.

However, OTS does not take into account the fact that a person moving along his usual path may see the same advertisement several times during the same day.

In international practice, there is the following division: OTS1 is the potential audience, OTS2 is the actual audience of the advertisement.

The OSCAR OTS measurement method for outdoor advertising assumes:

· compiling a catalog of outdoor advertising objects with their classification according to the criteria of location, size, network, lighting, and the presence of other objects within visibility;

· counting the number of people passing and driving past each object;

· calculation of the “visibility index” (from 0 to 1) by creating a mathematical model.

Among the methods for determining flows, the following are distinguished:

· counting the number of people passing and passing (manual or video recording);

· regular collection of information about people’s daily travels;

· computer modeling (neural network method).

However, the methods for calculating OTS2 (actual viewability) are different from the methods for calculating OTS1:

· survey (people are surveyed in places where posters are placed);

· fixation of attention by eye cameras (glasses that make it possible to determine the direction of attention);

· showing the target group a film about a walk along the street with outdoor advertising objects (Live-Plakat-Test method, carried out in Germany).

“As a result, VAI is calculated - Visibility Adjusted Impact - the perception coefficient for each type of outdoor advertising. Multiplying this coefficient by OTS1 leads to obtaining undistorted OTS2 - the real number of contacts over a period of time."

Next, the structure of the audience is determined, because to carry out correct comparative analysis it is necessary to know the structure of the audience of a particular advertising object. "The classic example is the Morgenstern Audience Structure Study, a series of studies conducted in France between 1983 and 1991." Let's consider this study more details.

Firstly, it should be noted that the sample consisted of more than 100 thousand people in 58 regions of the country. The questionnaire focused on how respondents moved during the week before the interview. “This study provided data on the reach and frequency of viewing of outdoor advertising by target groups.” As a result of conducting such a survey, it is possible to obtain data on the potential audience “who will be influenced by a message posted on advertising design».

A very important indicator of media planning is Gross Rating Point (GRP), because... takes into account the percentage ratio of the OTS (effective audience) size to the total market size (i.e., the number of the city’s active population aged 18 years and older). Thus, GRP is a basic value for assessing the audience of one advertising surface; the larger this value, the more effective outdoor URL advertising is considered: . In turn, the sum of GRP of advertising surfaces characterizes the volume of the entire advertising campaign. But at the same time, it is obvious that in the case of using outdoor advertising, features arise that are not inherent, for example, in the television market. The main reason is that depending on the market (with a high and low degree of involvement), firstly, the frequency of changing advertising messages changes, and secondly, the number of competitors is not comparable. If we talk about advertising specifically in the market banking services, then advertising here does not change as often as, for example, in the coffee market, because the offer of services remains the same for a long time, and the same applies to the number of competitors.

It is quite clear that outdoor advertising is not the subject of increased attention of passers-by on the street (unless it stands out strongly from the general mass); people are much more interested in the flow of cars, other passers-by or the route along which they are moving. However, the same can be said about advertising on television and in the press, because placing a message in prime time does not guarantee increased audience attention: we know very well that during a commercial break on television, few people remain on the same program or simply do not goes “about his business”, and the page in the newspaper with advertisement easy to scroll through. However, the value of data on passenger flows collected to assess the effectiveness of advertising placed on city streets is that, “unlike the audience of the press and broadcast, they are relatively stable, subject only to seasonal fluctuations and can be used repeatedly to calculate the GRP of different advertising campaigns» .

The main problems that arise when assessing the effectiveness of outdoor advertising and possible methods for solving them are shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Problems of assessing the effectiveness of outdoor advertising and methods for solving them.

Let's give an example of calculating OTS.

“For pedestrians, the “basic set of signs” consists of the following signs:

installation angle 15 degrees,

· possible duration of visual contact is 10 seconds,

· distance from the viewer 7 meters,

· no visual obstructions.

A billboard with these characteristics will provide advertising contact with 10% of pedestrians. For a Shield installation angle of 45 degrees to the flow - coefficient 1.17. Possible duration of visual contact is 15 seconds, coefficient - 1.15. Distance from the stream - 13 meters - 0.89. There are other visual stimuli. Coefficient - 0.85 Difficulty of the road situation (individual parameter) - coefficient 1.3 (for example).

In this case, the “number of recalled viewers” ​​for this billboard will be equal to 0.13, i.e. .

Consequently, 13% of viewers in a given stream (pedestrians) will be able to remember the image on the billboard.”

One fine day

The transition to GRP sales of outdoor advertising makes the relationship between operators and clients more transparent. But until customers begin to carefully count their money, and operators agree on common operating standards, such changes are postponed for an indefinite future.

The fate of outdoor advertising in our country has been very difficult. It is no coincidence that to illustrate the drama of her relationship with the advertiser, the leading outdoor* operator** News Outdoor Russia (NOR) chose excerpts from the film “Pretty Woman”. The outdoor advertising in the NOR film was introduced as Julia Roberts, and the advertiser as Richard Gere.

“For many years, clients bought television broadcasts based on ratings, and outdoor advertising worked honestly on the street. Clients bought billboards and city formats, meters and surfaces. But one fine day everything changed,” began NOR’s speech at the “Effective Outdoor Advertising” industry conference late last year.

The main topic of the conference was the transition to a GRP outdoor advertising sales system. The NOR company proposed a methodology that allows the use of GRP in outdoor advertising, and since December 2007 began offering such sales to Moscow clients. The authors of the system - NOR, the Mediaedge:cia agency and the research company ESPAR-Analyst - put forward the assumption that the system, which has long proven itself on television, should become a logical stage in the evolution of the outdoor advertising industry.

The results of the first ratings campaign for Bourjois were very encouraging, and advertising market analysts began to predict that GRP would become the new currency of outdoor advertising. However, for a number of reasons, the most important of which is the fragmentation of industry representatives, such changes will not happen soon and will definitely not happen overnight.

Client : Efficiency... How do you evaluate it?

: Take my word for it.

Client : Well, no. I'm not used to just believing like that. I pay money, so please give me reporting, numbers, number of contacts.

: Number of contacts? Are you sure you want to know these numbers?

The mechanism of the GRP sales system, as the media director of the Mediaedge:cia agency says Alexey Kulakov, borrowed from television practice, where this system has been used for a long time. “We tried to apply the principles of TV advertising pricing for outdoor advertising (in particular, we divided the city into zones with different rating indicators, similar to the allocation of prime time on TV), which were included in the program in the form of discounts and markup coefficients,” says Alexey Kulakov.

Application new system sales is designed to solve two important problems. The first of them is the creation of a transparent pricing mechanism. “An advertiser needs an effective system for evaluating the placement of outdoor advertising,” comments the marketing director of the St. Petersburg department store Miller Center. Alexey Aksenov. “It is important to obtain a certain coefficient that would unify the measurements and make it possible to buy contacts rather than addresses.”

It is important that the use of a single currency eliminates subjective assessments of advertising media. “Previously, each of the operators could make their own arguments in favor of the fact that their shield is better. And GRP acts as a single meter that minimizes the human factor,” explains Kulakov.

How adds general manager"ESPAR-Analyst" Andrey Berezkin, “the advertiser is much clearer language, expressing the purchase in terms of audience size rather than in terms of “250 sides of 3x6.”

Consequently, thanks to GRP, the process of communication between the operator and the client is automated. “When receiving an assessment based on rating points, the client often does not require detailed description, photographs and coordinates the program very quickly,” says the general director of the advertising agency “BV Media in St. Petersburg” Oleg Rodionov.

The second task that was set for the developers of the new sales system was to bring all main communication channels to unified system measurements in order to optimize the media planning process. “Obtaining comparable information about the size of the audience of advertising messages both in outdoor advertising and in other media allows the client to effectively distribute advertising budgets,” says Deputy Director of the NOR Marketing Department Anna Krasilshchikova.

The operator gets the opportunity to more flexible inventory management. “This system will allow operators to sell less in demand surfaces (located outside the main highways, in residential areas), since they are taken into account in the overall program with a certain GRP,” notes the director of the department marketing communications"MTS Russia" Evgenia Churbanova.

It also eases the relationship between agencies and advertisers. “The new system opens up opportunities to improve the level of service,” I am sure Anna Krasilshchikova. “Within a given budget and a defined campaign GRP, the agency can offer the client various program options, while providing a clear justification for what exactly the client is paying for in a particular case.”

Why happy GRP?

In fact, attempts to bring more objectivity to the outdoor advertising sector have been made for quite some time. According to Oleg Rodionov, BV Media first began offering assessment of outdoor advertising by GRP about ten years ago. “However, at that time our innovation was not in demand, even by progressive Western clients,” says Rodionov. “Back then everyone worked the old fashioned way, using visual assessments of advertising media. The advertising market itself was just in its infancy; although the new technologies were well-known among the leaders, they were not widely used.”

Later, the use of the rating system became more popular, but GRP was initially used only as a guide. This allowed the advertiser, in particular, to compare the cost of billboards from different operators. “If some operator’s shield with a similar rating was more expensive than NOR’s shield, this was a reason to negotiate lower prices,” the director of marketing and advertising for the chain of stores gives an example. Children's world» Ashot Harutyunyan.

In addition, rating indicators were convenient for planning advertising campaigns in agencies. “The network agency works with a number of operators, and it can set the condition that in order to include our surfaces in the general address program, it is necessary to indicate GRP,” explains the director of outdoor advertising sales at the VolgoBalt Media advertising agency. Dmitry Ganibalov.

Although the need for surface rating data has become urgent, operators have been reluctant to move to a GRP-based sales system. The fact is that the market situation did not require this and operators were not interested in spending resources on developing a complete system (in particular, on conducting expensive research to assess the ratings of all inventory, developing price coefficients and promoting the new system). “The demand for outdoor devices is so great that operators have no need to develop new mechanisms and conduct independent, expensive research,” says Alexey Aksenov.

What is the exchange rate?

However, many also have reasonable doubts about whether NOR will be able to implement a GRP sales system now.

The first difficulty in developing a new model is the lack of a clear measurement mechanism. Average ratings are calculated based on ESPAR-Analyst data. “We use an assessment of pedestrian and traffic flows in advertising locations to determine the audience that has a real opportunity to see advertising. For this, a system of factors is used that characterize the quality of the review of the advertising medium,” explains Andrey Berezkin.

The ESPAR methodology is generally the same as in the West, but it does not take into account some details and is therefore less accurate. “For example, in the USA, the system is based on information about traffic flows, which is obtained thanks to the serious efforts of the Department of Transport: they have territorially differentiated, detailed information on population movements. Our statistics at the territorial level are in their infancy: these are completely feasible studies, but extremely expensive,” notes Berezkin.

In addition, due to inertia, not everyone trusts the research company’s data. “With all due respect to ESPAR-Analyst, everyone knows its long-term affiliation with NOR,” says Dmitry Ganibalov. Of course, TNS Gallup's TV data is also questionable, but at least this company has always been independent.

One of the founders of ESPAR-Analyst, created in 1996, was the APR-City company, headed at that time by Maxim Tkachev, now managing director of News Outdoor Group (NOG) and NOR. In 2000, APR-City was purchased by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which included NOG. After this purchase, NOG became the owner of a blocking stake in ESPAR-Analyst. And only at the beginning of 2006, the top management of ESPAR-Analyst bought out NOG’s share, becoming the 100% owner of the research company.

Games for big people

The implementation of the new system is also hampered by the disinterest of small advertisers in using the GRP sales system: it is much more convenient for them to purchase individual billboards.

Purchasing by rating points should interest large advertisers. “A large advertiser cannot do everything perfectly and “catch” only the best billboards: he simply physically cannot collect so many surfaces. But he doesn’t want to buy worse surfaces either. And with the new system, he has a real tool that allows him to make calculations,” notes Harutyunyan.

Small clients have a number of complaints about the new system. Firstly, what matters to them is not the absolute size of the audience, but the targeting of the advertising structure. "For example, retail stores who buy several surfaces for signs, are not interested in purchasing by GRP, admits Anna Krasilshchikova. “After all, by fixed placement we mean the share of ratings in the prime zone agreed upon by the client, and not the purchase of specific addresses.”

Secondly, the same subjective factors that NOR wanted to get rid of are important to a small advertiser. “The disadvantage of this scheme is that the advertiser and the agency are excluded from the process of selecting advertising media,” says Alexey Aksenov. – And for us, choosing a targeted program is a key process. Plus, NOR sets a markup for a fixed program, and this is a lot of money.”

Thirdly, the error in the new system is too large for a small advertiser. “When a large Moscow advertiser takes 200 billboards in St. Petersburg and 20 of them (only 10%) turn out to be bad, he will survive. And if a St. Petersburg advertiser has 10 out of 20 billboards that turn out to be bad, then it’s a disaster,” continues Aksenov.

Hodgepodge

The third and main obstacle to the development of a rating sales system is the large number of outdoor operators in Russia.

Industry players simply cannot agree on common operating standards. “Any major advertising program typically consists of both NOR designs and designs from other operators. Therefore, a general transition to purchasing based on ratings will only become a reality when the majority of operators begin to use this kind of opportunity,” says Evgenia Churbanova.

In addition, small operators do not have enough surfaces to operate under the new system. “In Russia, the four largest players account for only about 30% of the market, the remaining 70% is shared by small operators with a share of less than 1% each. Most small companies simply do not have billboards with a high GRP level, so it is unlikely that this system will be quickly accepted by the community,” agrees the head of sales at the second outdoor advertising operator Gallery Inessa Molodkina.

In the West, unlike us, the outdoor advertising sector is much more developed, and therefore the mechanisms of work based on GRP have long been worked out.

“In each Western European country there are a maximum of three outdoor advertising operators who control the development of industry standards. In France, the development of the sector is determined by JCDecaux; in England, Viacom Outdoor International is involved in this. There are not a large number of players with whom advertisers and agencies interact,” says Alexey Kulakov.

In the outdoor advertising industry, due to its lack of consolidation, there is no single sales house where information about the GRP of all operators would be collected. “If you sell using the GRP system today, despite the absence of a single sales house, a situation may arise when the client, having purchased a certain number of advertising surfaces from several companies, will receive advertising boards that will stand next to each other (since the address program is determined by different operators ). In this case, the advertiser will lose coverage even if the required GRP amount is received,” notes Inessa Molodkina.

Western outdoor advertising has generally taken a different path of development - operators there sell outdoor advertising not as individual billboards, but mainly as networks that already have fixed rating indicators. “This path doesn’t suit us yet,” says Alexey Kulakov. “Only one operator in Russia can create 3x6 networks in Moscow, only two in St. Petersburg.”

Evolution is inevitable

It is likely that the consolidation of the industry will in the future affect the development of new sales mechanisms in our country. The only question is how long it will take.

Industry participants are sure of one thing: the transition to a GRP sales system is a natural and inevitable stage in the development of outdoor advertising. “If the market leader sets new rules, other participants will be forced to adapt to them,” believes Ashot Harutyunyan.

NOR is ready to refine the mechanism. “Our task is to enable clients to evaluate the effectiveness of the new approach and give their assessment of the direction in which we should improve the GRP sales model,” says Anna Krasilshchikova.

As for the sales of surfaces, it makes no sense to completely exclude such a scheme: advertisers have an objective need to create targeted programs. “Perhaps Muscovites will have their own system to place national advertising. And we will live as we lived,” suggests Alexey Aksenov.

It is curious that even on regional TV channels, advertisers sometimes make advertising purchases by the minute.

To summarize, we can say that the presence of two systems is seen by industry representatives as the most convenient option: two systems imply the possibility of comparing and combining programs, and this is always better than one model, which will be inconvenient for someone.

In any case, the development of more technologically advanced shopping systems depends on how actively customers demand it and how carefully they begin to count money. "And whoever offers customers more effective system sales, will take a leading position in the industry,” notes Andrey Berezkin.

Ksenia Voronina, correspondent for Expert North-West
“Growth Management” No. 1-2 (07-08)

In addition to the term “GRP”, the following options are also used: accumulated rating, total rating, gross rating coefficient, gross rating, sum of rating points.

Features of GRP calculation:

• accounting for repeated contacts with an advertising message
• the GRP percentage is not calculated based on the number of all possible contacts, but on the percentage of the effective audience

GRP in outdoor advertising

in outdoor advertising, the Gross Rating Point indicator is the percentage of the effective audience size (OTS) of the advertising surface to the total market size (city population aged 18 years and older)

The media plan may indicate the percentage calculated for each design, or the overall GRP of the advertising campaign, in which case it is meant by the term “total rating”

It is important to understand that the total coverage is different from the GRP, although the calculation results in similar values. GRP will not take into account all contacts with an advertising message, only interactions with an effective audience. On the other hand, the concept of "reach" includes only unique contacts, so the sum of all contacts is reduced by the estimated percentage of repeat views.

The value of an individual design is usually calculated based on daily GRP data, and reach/frequency target audience are calculated over a period of one month.

O.T.S.– potential audience of the advertising surface. It is calculated by measuring transport and pedestrian flows using coefficients that take into account the possibility of contact of all the main components of the potential audience (flows) with the advertising image

CPT- estimation of the cost of one thousand advertising contacts. It is calculated as the ratio of the daily price of an advertising surface to the number of possible visual contacts of the base audience with the advertising surface, reduced to an audience of 1000 people.

When comparing advertising campaigns, the previously discussed cost per thousand indicator is often used - in this case, CPT OTS. To obtain it, you need to divide the cost of the campaign by Impressions and multiply by a thousand.

CPT OTS = Budget / OTS x 1000

CPT OTS = 4,800 (1,200,000: 250,000x1000).

Unlike the aggregate rating, OTS has a certain physical meaning, allowing you to evaluate the overall weight of the campaign in terms of the number of contacts with the audience. It is important to understand that if, for example, the OTS is 200,000 people, then these are not 200,000 different people - the same people can be counted more than once.

When comparing advertising campaigns, the previously discussed cost per thousand indicator is often used - in this case, CPT OTS. To obtain it, you need to divide the cost of the campaign by OTS and multiply by a thousand.

O.T.S.considered as the frequency of contacts with the audience

If OTS considered as a frequency (analogous to frequency), then, accordingly, if we know the values ​​of the aggregate rating and audience coverage, we can determine the average frequency of impact on consumers:

OTS = GRP/Reach

For example, if 300 GRPs were collected during the campaign and 40% of the audience was reached, then the average frequency will be 7.5:

OTS = 7.5 (300:40)

If the term OTS is used for television, then for radio OTH (opportunity to hear).