outdoor

Definition:
The oldest of the five 'major' advertising media in Britain. Media professionals subdivide the medium into 'outdoor' and 'transport' categories, separating POSTER SITES seen mainly by motorists and public transport users from those not deliberately located to reach that particular target audience. In 1996, the non-transport outdoor category took 71 per cent of total expenditure on this medium. The distinction is made on the basis that the audience's relationship to the medium is markedly different in the two cases, but it must surely become blurred if one considers an 'outdoor' site next to a city-centre shopping precinct but facing a car park used by commuting motorists. Furthermore, there is considerable inconsistency in the use of the two terms. The ADVERTISING ASSOCIATION's Advertising Statistics Yearbook describes the combined medium as 'Outdoor & Transport'; BRAD (q.v.) calls it 'Posters & Outdoor'; the ADVERTISER'S ANNUAL distinguishes 'transport' from 'poster & outdoor'. The key characteristic of the medium is, of course, that the vehicle for the advertisement is generally a POSTER of some sort. Granted, the options available to advertisers at one time or another have included illuminated signs such as those in Piccadilly Circus and Times Square, electronic 'spectaculars', sandwich boards, milk bottles and a host of other spaces listed elsewhere in this entry, but those constitute only a very small part of the whole. Whatever we choose to call this diverse medium, it is today the third largest, accounting for exactly 4 per cent of total UK advertising expenditure in 1996. Its slice of the pie was around 8 per cent until the arrival of commercial television in 1955, after which it fell steadily to just under 4 per cent in 1966. The figure has since fluctuated within a narrow band between 4.3 per cent in 1979 and 3.4 per cent in 1989. Outdoor is a much less significant medium in the USA, taking just 1 per cent of total advertising expenditure in 1995, but much more important in France at 12 per cent and Japan at 14 per cent. MEDIA PLANNERS face a variety of MEDIA VEHICLES and a potentially daunting choice of MEDIA OPTIONS. The listings in BRAD distinguish four vehicles within the medium it calls 'posters and outdoor': 'roadside', 'transport', 'specialised' and 'venue' advertising. Options available in the first category comprise conventional posters in ten sizes, targeted geographically and demographically: for example, a 'roadside 48-sheet (see POSTER SIZES) Captains of Industry package'. The second consists of a considerable variety of available spaces in and on buses and taxis, in underground and 'overground' stations, and at airports, also targeted geographically and demographically: for example, 4-sheet posters at all 'Inner Commuter' railway stations in London. The 'specialised' category comprised, at the time of writing, spaces on hot-air balloons, airships, blimps, supermarket trolleys and fresh eggs, and aeroplane-towed banners. 'Venue' options included posters and signs at or in: hospitals; exhibition halls; sports and athletics stadia; motor racing circuits; golf courses; pub and restaurant washrooms. MEDIA BUYERS negotiate campaigns 'line by line' (that is, site by site individually) or in packages. Located between the precision of the first and the pig-in-a-poke risk of the second is the 'PSC' option, standing for Pre-Selected Campaign. Large advertisers can reserve prime locations indefinitely by placing a 'TC' (till countermanded) order. Outdoor advertising space is bought either direct from the MEDIA OWNERS, called 'contractors', or through 'poster buying specialists', intermediaries who are paid a booking fee by contractors. Roughly half the available media options are owned by a large number of small contractors, the remainder by three very large ones: Maiden Outdoor Advertising, Mills & Allen and More O'Ferrall Adshel. MEDIA PLANNERS have access to a range of audience data based on large-scale research surveys. Outdoor advertising in general is covered by the POSTAR continuous research programme, which replaced OSCAR at the end of 1995: see the respective specific entries. The audience for bus advertising in the London area has been measured since 1991. Initial research specified the services, timetables and advertising spaces available on every 'link' between 'nodes' in the 'bus network'. In-home interviews with 1,000 residents of Greater London and 150 hours of video recordings made by a survey car yielded a database that provides planners with COVERAGE and FREQUENCY figures, relating to both pedestrians and motorists, for every 'link' between 'nodes' in the 'bus network'. The audience for London Underground advertising was measured by the 'TRAC' survey (Tube Research & Audience Classification), in which 5,000 travellers recruited at a number of stations around the system kept travel diaries over 28 days in 1993. That database provides an average figure for 'number of exposures per person, per campaign, per site and per panel size'. Some of the contractors offering more specialised options provide their own audience breakdowns: for instance, a demographic profile of travellers on the Tyne & Wear Metro, based a field survey of the local market in 1994. The general audience for outdoor advertising obviously has pretty much the same profile as th epoulation at large. In the case of bus advertising, it is significantly more upmarket than the population as a whole and somewhat younger, while London Underground users are very much more upmarket (perhaps unexpectedly), younger and more likely to be male than female. It should consequently come as no surprise that the top-spending outdoor advertisers in 1995 were Nestle, Vauxhall, Honda, International Distillers & Vintners, Royal Mail and BT.

Cross-References:
[media owners] [media planner] [poster site] [media vehicle] [media option] [media buyer] [OSCAR] [poster] [POSTAR] [frequency] [coverage] [Advertising Association (AA)] [Advertiser's Annual] [Brad]

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