Adspace Digital Mall Network is adopting new audience metrics by using Scarborough Research’s mall visit estimates as its base. Scarborough reports the number of people visiting malls and frequency of visits, giving media buyers reach and frequency estimates to help evaluate mall advertising.
Addition of Reach and Frequency
Historically, Adspace has built its rate card based on mall traffic and applying Nielsen viewing data to the traffic figures to generate overall impressions. Traffic for all mall-based media is currently sourced from the mall operators, which use significantly different methods for counting traffic. (via MediaBuyerPlanner).
Mall traffic typically has not been broken down into its component parts, meaning individuals and their frequency of visiting a mall. Therefore, traditional reach and frequency audience metrics could not be developed for mall media, Adspace says. Because Scarborough reports the number of individuals visiting a mall and their frequency of mall visits, Adspace can now provide reach and frequency by DMA for planners using traditional GRP-based planning models.
For out-of-home planners, individuals visiting a mall and their frequency of visits are combined to provide a total traffic figure.
William Ketcham, evp and CMO for Adspace Networks, says Adspace is increasingly being integrated into more mainstream plans that include TV and radio, and, like TV, its metrics must support reach and frequency planning models.
Paul Lenhart, digital out-of-home director for Zenith Media, agrees that planning in the out-of-home industry needs to be more comparable to other media, and calls Adspace’s move “a step in the right direction [to] provide the media community with an alternative metric that is more indicative of the true traffic in the mall and the viewership of the Smart Screens.”
New Data Reduces Total Traffic Numbers
The new Scarborough data actually reduces total traffic in the Adspace Digital Mall Network by 9%, Adspace says.
However, the revised rate card incorporates the results of a Nielsen viewing study conducted in late 2009 which showed a 30% increase in traffic viewing the screens, versus the same Nielsen study fielded in 2007. The net change over last year’s rate card is an 18% increase in impressions.
Pricing is not increasing, Adspace says, so the CPM declines from $4.89 to $4.12, providing “significantly more value to advertisers.” Adspace Networks says 65% of mall shoppers view its “smart screens.”
