MUMBAI: While marketers are still looking out for a measurement mechanism to understand RoI for the out of home segment, Milestone Brandcom has gone ahead to create one. The outdoor agency has come up with an audience measurement eco-system called ‘Milestone Optimizer’ that will make planning, buying and evolution processes transparent.
The agency has invested over Rs 5 crore in developing this apparatus and has covered top 10 cities in India which they believe accounts for 75 per cent of outdoor advertising spends. The cities include Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune, Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Ludhiana. The agency will cover additional 25 cities in the next 18-20 months. The system has registered 25000 site details of these 10 cities. The tool right now will be used by the agency for its own clients. In the long run, the agency is looking at gaining confidence of the industry to make ‘Optimizer’ as a standard mechanism.
“We wanted to move away from site level discussions,” says Milestone Brandcom MD and founder Nabendu Bhattacharya. The Optimizer introduces a new measurement matrix Gross Impression Points (GIP) which will help measure the reach and frequency of an outdoor campaign. Bhattacharya believes that the outdoor business is expected to grow to 12 per cent this year and he thinks this will happen because of the stability of new government in power and positive economic growth that is expected in the coming months.
“In the world of hyper local targeting it has become difficult to customise campaigns at the micro level especially in outdoor. With Optimizer we are sure to develop outdoor campaigns even with very specific briefs,” adds Bhattacharya.
Milestone Optimizer was developed with the support of industry veterans, media owners, marketing and brand managers across categories and brands. IRS iLAP (Hansa Research); TGI (IMRB Research), Traffic Study (Gfk Mode); Technology Partner (Unikov Technologies) are a few credible databases used in developing a robust scientific planning OOH tool.
Through GIP, outdoor campaigns can also be compared with the more conventional forms of advertising such as print, TV and radio. It will also allow brands to evaluate category benchmarking and market threshold level of activity giving a whole new dimension to media planning. The agency will soon focus on developing digital out of home campaigns.
