OMAC releases new research on Out Of Home's impact

September 29, 2010 by Dave Haynes

OMAC, the Out-of-home Marketing Association of Canada, has released highlights of new research that reinforces the value and impact of the medium across various advertising categories.

An online survey of some 2,200 adults in Toronto and Montreal evaluated OOH, TV, radio and online advertising across five categories: wireless services, mobile phones, packaged food, quick-service restaurants and casual apparel.

Reports Marketing magazine:

Participants were shown out-of-home ads and the first eight seconds of TV, radio and online ads.

The study found that in the spend/recall performance metric, out-of-home outperformed TV in seven of eight measured categories.

The study found that despite representing a smaller percentage of the total marketing spend in all but one campaign, out-of-home delivered more unduplicated recall than TV in two campaigns. In Toronto, for example, 18% of respondents recalled seeing only out-of-home advertising in the mobile phone category compared with 16% who recalled TV only–despite out-of-home representing just 39% of the spend.

And in Montreal, 31% of respondents recalled seeing only out-of-home advertising in the casual apparel category, compared with 28% who recalled seeing TV only. Out-of-home represented 45% of the total budget.

The research also demonstrated how TV and out-of-home can work in harmony, with the combination of the two generating recall rates of 60% or more in all eight categories across the two markets.

I have sent OMAC a note asking if the study included DOOH, but based on methodology I don’t think so.

OMAC president Rosanne Caron said the purpose of the study was to quantify the value of out-of-home in the media mix, while at the same time building on previous research conducted on everything from media habits to ad avoidance.

“We’ve built a lot of case studies over the years, but with all the changes that are taking place in the marketing landscape, we wanted to have something that reflected that environment,” she said.

Caron said that studies demonstrating a chosen media’s efficacy have a lot of resonance with marketers, particularly as the media landscape grows more complicated.

“I think this type of research is really important as the marketing and media landscape is changing rapidly. I think it’s up to the media [associations] to continue to provide current evidence of the effectiveness of their particular media,” she said. “Things aren’t the same as they were three or four years ago. It’s constantly changing.”

OMAC released some research earlier in the year specific to DOOH.