What's New In Mobile Media?
Scottsdale, AZ

What's New In Mobile Media?

For years, many people in various industries have been trying to conclude a good way to calculate how many viewer impressions might be achieved with vehicular advertising messages placed on their vehicles (such as transportation fleet managers, major brand marketing directors and individual business vehicle owners) who want to promote their own company name, products or services on their own vehicles... or such as ad agencies or advertising clients who are considering doing public transit, taxi top, truckside or vehicle wraps, etc on third-party vehicles.

Many methodologies have been painfully attempted by media research companies (such as TAB, MISA, etc.), the American Trucking Association, the Private Fleet Council, major brands (with their own fleet of vehicles), mobile media companies (offering vehicle advertising programs) and many other independent marketing firms and government agencies. To-date, no one has been able to come up with a comprehensive methodology that is reasonably accurate or universally agreed upon for measuring mobile media. Most studies have (wrongly) tried to mimic or replicate methodologies used by the stationary outdoor industry... measuring "traffic" in the local universe of (traveling past) the advertising display.

The problem with implementing "alike viewership measuring methodologies" (those used for calculating stationary outdoor to also measure vehicular advertising) is:

As of recently, there is a growing 'acceptance' that the industry needs to take on a different approach for more accurately and universally (comprehensively) calculating mobile media viewership potentials *(some new method for evaluating any advertising display on wheels).

The 'new approach' that is fast gaining industry acceptance involves measuring differing types of arterial settings, documenting (validating) 'average counts' for each of their typically similar viewership 'likelihoods'. For example; average viewer counts (by categoriy) for rural interstate, suburban interstate, urban interstate, secondary arterials, downtown city streets (separately for each, major and secondary marketplaces), parked / stationary settings, both peak -vs- off-peak hours, weekdays -vs- week ends, etc. To exaggerate 'the example', we all realize that a mural graphic trailer truck operating in downtown Manhattan -vs- a rural interstate highway across Kansas... are going to generate greatly different numbers of viewer impressions. Their differing 'Modes of Operation' make each 'a different CPM value'.

To have a credible media research company once and for all 'validate' arterial setting viewership counts, the entire industry would once and for all have a baseline means of appraising and assessing ANY advertising vehicle they utilize for their mobile media campaigns... *with confidence that their expectations of viewer impressions were 'reasonably accurate'. Then, any form of mobile media could be both; sold and purchased with some universal assurance of value, based on some generally accepted 'industry standard'.

A vehicle's 'mode of operation' is crucial in determining its worth as an advertising display. If you know the arterial settings in which it operates (by the hour or by the day) *with some 'validated formula' you can utilize to calculate viewer counts in those settings... need I say more ??

-Article provided by R. Scott Campbell
Roadmark Mobile Media

OAAA- *Only if appropriate (for this article), reference the Viewer Impressions Formula that we have researched and posted at the very heading of our web site Home Page: www.busads.com It explains the efforts we have made to provide 'the industry' some reasonable formula to work with until this methodology is validated by TAB, MISA or someone other more credible source than us.

For more information, contact Roadmark, Inc. (602) 684-8078