In this opinion piece, Goa managing director Chris Tyquin talks data and out of home advertising, and how they meet in the middle.

We can never have too much data.

In just over five years the out-of-home industry has come from almost none, to way more than we expected. What we have in Australia with MOVE has been proclaimed as the best OOH audience measurement system in the world, and it is only the beginning.

There is going to be a whole lot more data available soon thanks to the initiative to fuse emma with MOVE data, which is now well underway. This will enable subscribers to cross-tabulate all of emma’s media, demographic, attitudinal, lifestyle and product consumption variables against the formats measured by MOVE.

Our biggest watchout will be not to create our own paralysis, through our own analysis. We have to be diligent, making sure we are only cherry-picking the most relevant data for our clients’ needs. Traditional digital out of home (DOOH) audience measurement will remain to be a challenge.

DOOH is a very different beast to classic static billboards – not just in the way they look, but by the way audiences respond to them. In fact 66 per cent of people actually go so far as to say they view DOOH into the urban landscape as a welcome distraction (according to the OMA and Kantar Media).

Digital is far more immediate than the static, but it is not to say that one is better than the other. We have to always keep in mind that audiences will continue to respond to them in different ways.

At present, State Government Household Travel Surveys (GHTS) are helping us to measure behaviour and generate the results for a typical audience day. This is done for a single day. While it is a great Reach and Frequency overview, there’s even more room for improvement over coming years in terms of audience variability (range, mean, variance and standard deviation) information.

Out-of-home will always hold our attention, both as advertisers and consumers. Unlike other mediums, we do not have to choose to engage with out-of-home – it is part of our everyday life, where we play, work, travel, commute and shop.

As they say, “Data is king!”, and will always be. Out-of-home will continue to strive, compliment and overcome the modern media consumption world – as long as we continue to respect the data.