Nielsen will count L.A. billboard viewers.

Caught that cool new billboard on Sunset Boulevard? It could be catching you this summer, thanks to Nielsen Media Research and the next wave in measuring consumers' exposure to outdoor advertising.

Nielsen--the outfit responsible for providing data on television viewership and Web site ratings--is launching a service that will track the travel patterns of local residents and thus, their exposure to billboards and other forms of outdoor advertising.

"You can estimate the number of people passing (outdoor signs), but who they are and where they come from has never been measured before," said Lorraine Hadfield, Nielsen Outdoor's managing director. "The (new) data will be incredibly valuable for media owners, ad agencies and advertisers."

Last week, the Nielsen Outdoor division of Nielsen Media Research started dialing up Los Angeles residents, recruiting thousands of them for a new type of ratings sample. For nine days this summer, selected consumers will tote the "Npods"--for Nielsen personal outdoor devices--as they travel to and from work, school or errands. That will enable Nielsen to track their movements via the 1.5-ounce, global positioning system-enabled devices that look like cell phones. The Npods rely on 24 satellites to pinpoint users' locations every 20 seconds.

The company will then compare those movements with a map of L.A.'s 26,000 outdoor signs. That way, the company can trace the number of times that consumers pass the signs on foot, in cars or on buses.

"There is more exposure to readable signage in Los Angeles than anywhere else," said Stephen Freitas, chief marketing officer for the Outdoor Advertising Association of America. "The vast majority is traveling outside daily."

Not cheap

The association doesn't follow individual markets, but overall spending on outdoor advertising in the United States was $6.3 billion last year, up from $5.8 billion in 2004.

That figure represents only 3 to 4 percent of expenditures on all forms of advertising nationwide, but Freitas pointed out that the more than 8 percent growth in outdoor advertising last year outpaced the overall industry, which had only a 4 percent growth.

That's significant as newspaper ad revenues decline and televised advertising scrambles to keep up with such new delivery formats as video on-demand and Podcasts.

"Outdoor advertising has the ability to reach an ever more mobile public," Freitas said. "What we're seeing is not only the fragmentation of raw television viewership, but a decline in viewership at home as people spend more time outside their homes."

Gathering the data isn't cheap. In addition to the "many millions" spent developing the technology by Nielsen, the Outdoor Advertising Association of America ponied up about $1 million to back the Chicago study, Freitas said.

Nielsen is banking on a desire for demographic figures from advertisers and ad agencies to make their investments pay off. JCDecaux and Viacom Outdoor have already signed on.

"We've been waiting a long time for this. It was a matter of whether we as a collective industry have been prepared to pay for it, since it's very expensive," said Kate Sirkin, global research director of Starcom Mediavest Group, one of Nielsen's Chicago clients.

"I think the industry reached a tipping point about four years ago, and finally realized we could make more money if we were willing to pay for credible data."

Los Angeles is the largest outdoor advertising market in the country. Over the last three years, Nielsen Outdoor worked to establish the system for outdoor advertising, undertaking field trials in South Africa, Frankfurt, Germany, and New York before testing in Chicago. Eventually, Nielsen plans to test all of the top 10 U:S. media markets, as well as top global markets using the technology.

The first field trial in Johannesburg in 2002 used GPS equipment in participants' cars to track travel patterns, until Nielsen realized that the sample excluded people traveling by foot or using public transportation.

That's when engineers in Florida got to work designing the portable Npod, which was carried by 850 Chicago-area residents for nine days during the summer of 2004.

In Chicago, 97 percent of the study showed participants were reached by outdoor ads, leaving 3 percent who somehow bypassed the more than 12,500 signs in the city. With more than twice the outdoor ads in L.A., the percentage of inhabitants left unexposed here is likely to be lower, or so the trade associations are hoping.

Privacy concerns

Since the system relies on GPS to track the participants-technology already used in millions of cars and cell phones--it raises the specter of Big Brother-like constant surveillance.

After all, giving someone or some company the ability to find out when and how long you were in traffic on Wilshire Boulevard may give some people pause.

Not to worry, says Nielsen. The data isn't being tracked in real-time, so nobody's actively looking over your shoulder.

But even with a limited-size, anonymous study and informed participant consent, privacy issues exist.

John Soma, executive director of the Privacy Foundation, a Denver-based research and privacy-fights advocacy group, said that the obligation to obtain meaningful consent--or making sure participants fully understand that there are some circumstances in which their GPS-tracked travel during the study could be subpoenaed, like in court proceedings--falls squarely on Nielsen's shoulders.

"It's the same concept as some of the red light cameras. Can you use it in divorce or child-custody cases, or in a trade secret dispute? You could, and it goes to character and credibility in those types of proceedings," said Soma. "Any litigation and a lawyer can start learning about it. I am fearful that Nielsen may not have done due diligence in explaining all of these implications to those in the study."

ANNE RILEY-KATZ

Staff Reporter