Billboard data

WSJ.com - Outdoor Ads, Here's Looking at You:
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.Nielsen, a unit of VNU NV of the Netherlands that for decades has provided ratings for TV and radio, is testing a cellphone-size gizmo it calls the Npod, or Nielsen Personal Outdoor Device. In a test in the Chicago area that started in April, about 400 people have each spent 10 days carrying the Npod around town. The device uses the satellite-based global positioning system to track the wearers' locations, and Nielsen matches their courses of travel with a coded map of 12,000 outdoor-ad units in the area.

The cellphone-size Nielsen Personal Outdoor Device, is being used to develop an audience measurement system for outdoor advertising in the greater Chicago area.


Nielsen, which recruited a total sample of 750 people for the test, will gather data until the end of this month and plans to present in September a detailed demographic breakdown -- including age, gender, income and education -- of Chicago-area outdoor-ad viewers.


One of the findings thus far is that more than 50% of all outdoor advertising impressions among Chicago-area residents earning more than $100,000 a year happen in such neighborhoods as Calumet City, Elsdon, Melrose Park and Englewood. "These are all lower- to mid-income areas, and our findings dispel the myth that only the location of outdoor sites determines who is exposed to the advertising message," says Will Thoretz, head of communications for Nielsen Outdoor.


The Npod project "will allow a media buyer to look at outdoor at a level playing field with other measured media and determine where to invest advertising dollars across the entire media mix," Mr. Thoretz says.