Andy
Stevens, SVP of Research and Insights for Clear Channel Outdoor Americas,
spent most of his career in digital advertising. Although he started primarily
selling pop-up ads, he saw digital becoming a major force in the industry. “I
loved it because digital gives you a huge amount of granular audience data. You
can verify who has seen your ads.”
But digital was not an advertising panacea for him. He explained
that, “There are huge benefits found in digital, but in the end, the creative
execution is sometimes lacking, and recall is not always great.” So about a
year ago he made the decision to move to OOH (out of home). “OOH has many
intuitive benefits but has had its challenges,” he confided. “The creative
canvas is huge, highly-visible and there is no ad skipping, which is great, but,
until now, there has been no ability to verify or pinpoint who is seeing the ad
and hence no true detailed audience data available. The good news is that
mobile technology is helping OOH bridge the data gap of who actually sees the
ad and what they do after seeing it. I saw the opportunity to use my knowledge
in digital and translate it into the OOH arena.”
In this interview, Andy talks about his path to research,
his current job at Clear Channel Outdoor Americas, how digital and out of home
data helps inform advertisers about the consumers’ journey, privacy protection
in location-based verification and his advice to the next generation. He also
offers some insights into where he sees the media industry headed in the next
three to five years.
Charlene Weisler: Andy, Clear Channel Outdoor Americas has just
announced a new research and sales initiative called Clear Channel Outdoor RADAR.
What is that?
Andy: We chose the term “RADAR” because the tool is
designed to give you a better view of the physical landscape and the OOH assets
in it. RADAR overlays data from various mobile sources and illustrates where
audiences move throughout the physical world. Further, it denotes the best OOH locations to
reach them. Using this anonymous and aggregated audience data ,we can be better informed about when and where consumer
groups shop, work, live, seek entertainment as a way to get a physical world
attribute to their behaviors. Then we overlay our inventory throughout the day.
It’s like mobile advertising, using the same consumer behavior, but using it
for OOH.
Charlene: Is there a thought to combining OOH with Mobile to begin an
industry standard measurement and sales application?
Andy: We are thinking about that as a separate product
release – a marriage of Mobile and OOH is a great opportunity as both mediums enable
advertisers to reach audiences on the go.
Charlene: How did you get into research? What did you study in school?
Andy: I studied psychology. It is a scientific discipline to
understand human behavior. Then upon graduation I did the usual consulting but
nothing resonated until I found media. Once in media, I started out as an
analyst crunching numbers and bought media on an impression basis. But from
there I began to get more into the strategic side of the business. Increasingly,
the line between research and marketing is becoming blurred. Marketing used to
be more qualitative but we are now in a data driven world. I am a researcher
but marketing now falls very close to what I do.
Charlene: What is the most important data point in digital measurement?
Andy: I don’t believe there is ever a single most important
data point. It depends on the objectives of a campaign and who you are trying
to reach. Advertising has become more sophisticated with more granular data
that is available. Abandoning a shopping cart is a powerful signal and through
data we are able to understand when and how that happens. That is why, when you
abandon, ads pop up for things that you have already seen. Data delivers us an
understanding of people’s behavior and buying patterns that drive their
behavior. We get a more individualistic, more granular picture of the
individual consumer.
Charlene: What is the most important data point in Out of Home?
Andy: Traditionally the most important data point is
location as we are fundamentally a location-based medium. But this can be just
a proxy to where and whom the ad is reaching. If an ad is on a billboard on the
New Jersey Turnpike, we know it reaches commuters. The challenge is that it is
manual, and requires in-depth knowledge of the market. It takes both art and
science to presume motivation. The general point is that despite the size and
impact of digital data, which is huge, only 15 percent of purchases take place
online. Unlocking location and sales data is key.
Charlene: So with both digital and OOH, what about privacy amongst this
granular data?
Andy: There are many areas where user data is used for more
effective advertising; all forms of communication rely on consumer information.
And there is nothing wrong with that as long as there’s no PII (personally
identifiable information) – it is all reduced to a number and a clean link to
the data with companies like Axciom, for example. And there are clear opt-out
policies. We piggy-back off the mobile system and we are completely compliant,
while benefitting from being location-based.
We’ve all seen Minority Report where customized ads address
you by name. But I’m not sure it’s a great user experience and is a little
creepy to be honest. With a mass-medium like OOH, a better use is to target
general patterns of consumer groups, not the individual.
Charlene: Do you use beacons?
Andy: There are some really interesting uses for Beacons to
help create customized mobile experiences in retail locations, hotels, sports
grounds, etc. However, we also need to
be aware of the limitations of beacons on roadside inventory (of which the bulk
of OOH inventory in the US is comprised) because they cannot connect to a
device driving past them at speed. As
such, their applicability as a measurement tool is limited.
Charlene: Where do you see OOH going in the next three to five years?
Andy: I think that the location-based data ecosystem will
see more consolidation in the same way we saw with behavioral data providers in
the online space. Also, I see growth in programmatic OOH as advertisers use
automated tools to plan and buy OOH ads.
Charlene: What advice would you give to a college student today
regarding a career in research?
Andy: To my mind, the most important skill for an
advertising researcher is to be able to interpret and tell a story about the
data. Competence with numbers is table stakes but being able to make those
numbers come alive for your client is the hardest bit. In starting out, get
your foot in the door somehow. Ad agencies are flexible so don’t obsess about
the title. Choose a good company and learn the basics of how media works.
This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com
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