We'll develop the best audience measurement system: Tony Jarvis

Tony Jarvis, Proprietor & Research Architect at Olympic Media Consultancy, and Lead Consultant of Indian Outdoor Advertising Association (IOAA) for the development of OOH audience measurement metrics project, interacted with the industry leaders in Lucknow and Delhi NCR in the final leg of his India visit. During this visit, Jarvis studied and surveyed the city demographics, media deployment patterns and met with various OOH concessionaires, media owners and representatives of brands advertising in the OOH space. "The market is in need of an audience measurement tool,” he said.

Speaking about what he observed in the Delhi NCR market, Jarvis said he noticed certain high traffic zones where there were no outdoor advertising. While that might be due to certain regulations, he said that outdoor media could gain wider acceptance of all stakeholders by playing a part in social communication and by adopting environment-friendly practices. He said that such an approach would hold the industry in good stead across all markets in the country.

Commenting on the challenges that he anticipates in the development and adoption of audience measurement metrics in India, Jarvis said that a shift in the mindset of the industry players would be the most crucial of all. Turning a cluttered OOH landscape into one where media enjoys high viewability, and adoption of certain qualitative research methods would be some of other challenges for the industry.

Jarvis noted that while media owners have expressed their apprehensions over a single currency serving different formats and locations including mall media, ambient media, etc.,

"It is not an issue. It has been dealt with internationally. We will eventually get a measurement tool and once we get that currency we may use it with slightly different approaches and methods. But all different formats have been measured somewhere in the world with one currency. May be, some tweaking or changes may happen but I think we can do it at a good level. Also, there is no media currency that is imperfect but ours will be little more prefect,” Tony summed up.