The IOS is the first ever audience measurement system for outdoor media in India. After extensive research, the much awaited Indian Outdoor Survey, better known as the IOS, has now been launched by Media Research User’s Council (MRUC) and Hansa Research. It is the first syndicated study on the medium that will resolve some of the key concerns of advertisers, their agencies and the sellers of outdoor media.
The IOS Model
The IOS was an intensive and extensive project covering more than 70 site parameters (size, clutter, stoppages and illumination) for 4,500 sites across nearly 1,000 stretches of roads (IOS stretches) in Mumbai, collected and collated by 50 field executives over nine months. Also, nine months of traffic count was done, covering nearly 12 lakh data points using nearly 60 field executives. Following this, detailed journey information was collected by 80 people over 10 months from 4,500 respondents.
The IOS is designed to provide audience led research at par with other media in order to establish traffic, cover and frequency estimates. It is a complete media planning and buying tool for the outdoor media that appraises outdoor sites with respect to their ‘visibility’ quality. IOS goes beyond measurement of ‘visibility’ and provides ‘reach’ for the selected sites as part of a campaign. It also allows planning of campaigns targeted to reach select ‘audiences’ at defined levels of exposure.
The IOS database capabilities aid in planning and buying of hoardings, bus shelters and kiosks. It provides an estimate of count of traffic by five different modes (two wheelers, three wheelers, bus, car/taxi and pedestrians) by stretch and an estimate of the traveling population and pedestrians present on the road stretch, and their profiles. It offers, for the first time, comparison of outdoor with other media on reach, OTS, effective reach, effective OTS and costs /CPT.
Challenge for IOS
The IOS will answer questions that an advertiser may have, like – is my brand getting due exposure for the monies being spent? What is the basis of the cost for a site? Is my agency delivering high quality and cost effective outdoor campaigns? It will answer planner/buyers’ questions such as what is the reach/OTS delivered by the outdoor campaign? Which alternative combination of sites will deliver comparative results? How do I speed up the cumbersome site selection process? How can I scientifically compare the effect of outdoor with print and TV plans?
For the planner, the IOS takes the drudgery out of the planning process by providing site census, with all site parameters provided in the database. It provides site photographs and site parameters by area. The site selection tool is flexible and allows one to select sites based on any of the site parameters such as size, illumination, angle, offset, obstruction, road and area. It provides ‘Plan Optimizer’ and ‘Plan Evaluator’ to help in media planning and buying scientifically, where the latter allows six sites to be compared at a time.
Queries of media owners such as: how to add value to sites to beat competition? How to increase clients’ budget on outdoor? How to drive up revenue per site? Where to put up new sites are also addressed. The IOS will help media owners drive up site revenue and will help market planning of inventory. They will be in a position to offer competitive CPTs vs. competition and also package sites to offer a value proposition to the advertiser/agency.
Key Findings of the research
An important finding was that outdoor reach is close to print reach, where reach of TV is the highest, followed by C&S, print and outdoor. Outdoor reach is comparable to that of print and is much higher than other media. While outdoor’s reach is 66 per cent for print it is 67 per cent. MRUC and Hansa Research have classified the reach of outdoor advertising on the basis of socio-economic class (SEC), gender, age group, occupation, education, working class, travel class, etc.
According to the survey, in SEC D+E, OOH reaches out to 63 per cent of the category as compared to 48 per cent by the print media, while in SEC B+C, OOH and print have an equal reach of 68 per cent. But in SEC A, OOH reaches 69 per cent audiences as compared to 93 per cent in case of print.In case of gender-wise classification, OOH advertising has 77 per cent reach in case of males and 50 per cent reach in case of females while the print reach is 77 per cent in case of males and 55 per cent in case of females.
The age-group classification of the survey reveals that between the age group of 15–19 year-olds, OOH reaches 69 per cent audiences as compared to 76 per cent reach in case of print. While in the case of the 20-29 age group, both OOH and print reaches 71 per cent audiences. For the 30–49 age group, OOH reaches out to 65 per cent viewers as compared to 66 per cent in case of print.Lastly, for the age group above 50 years, OOH as a medium reaches out to 57 per cent, while print has a reach of 63 per cent.
Education-wise, media reach increases with the increase in education levels. According to MRUC findings, in the graduates and post-graduates category, the outdoor reach is 82 per cent while the print reach is 95 per cent. In the case of the group with SSC/HSC/College level education, the outdoor reach is 69 per cent, while print reach is 87 per cent. In case of people who are educated upto the ninth standard, the outdoor reach is 60 per cent while the print reach is 57 per cent. In the group that had no schooling, the outdoor reach is 37 per cent whereas print reach is as low as 1 per cent.
The survey also found that there is a significant differentiation in outdoor reach in the classification by working status. Among the working class populace, the outdoor reach is 81 per cent, while print reach is 74 per cent. In non-working class, the outdoor reach is 42 per cent while print reach is 55 per cent. In the student category, the outdoor reach is 76 per cent while print reach is 80 per cent. When it comes to travel behavior, on an average, a Mumbaikar makes 11 journeys in a week. During these 11 journeys, he covers 49 stretches, thus, stretches travelled per journey is 4.5.
‘Modes Used’ provide distribution of different modes used by the respondent across 49 stretches excluding modes such as trains and bicycles. A survey has considered a mode to be used even if it is used for only a part of the stretch. According to the findings, walking is the most common mode of transport followed by the bus. Three wheelers and Car/Taxi occupy the next slots and two wheelers come in last slot. Age-wise, there is significant differentiation in journeys as well as stretches travelled by the two genders. The findings reveal that females use more of 'walk' and three-wheelers as compared to males.
The number of journeys and stretches travelled, use of personal transport (two-wheelers, cars) increases with education. Occupation-wise, the number of stretches travelled increase significantly with higher occupation categories. Car use increases and that of 'walk' decreases among higher occupation categories. However, SEC-wise, the number of stretches travelled increases with increase in SEC. The findings show that car travel changes significantly with increase in SEC. All classes show more or less equal propensity to travel. Thus, outdoor is suitable for most of the classes. Men travel more than women. Working people and students travel more than non-working. Affluent use more personal transport (cars, two wheelers etc.) and travel on more stretches.
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