UK’s outdoor advertising trade body is building a cross-network ad playout reporting system
Thursday, February 16, 2023
Outsmart, the trade body for the Out of Home (OOH) industry is building a new data system to centralise all advertising playout information into one single point for buyers to access.
At present there is a ‘peer-to-peer’ approach, but Playout will fully standardise and improve the communication of this data thus delivering greater accountability, efficiency and transparency across the Out-of-Home industry.
Centralising playout data across classic and digital inventory provides a number of benefits:
1. Improves and promotes industry accountability
2. Is more efficient than the current ‘peer-to-peer’ approach
3. Fully standardises the data and improves the communication of the data
4. Can be independently audited and accredited
5. Presents future opportunities to better measure OOH in ROI studies e.g. marketing mix modelling and econometrics
It has the support of Outsmart’s four council members Clear Channel, Global, JCDecaux and Ocean Outdoor as well as the backing of specialist media-buying agencies Kinetic, Posterscope, Rapport and Talon. We expect many more agencies and media owners to join soon.
Tim Lumb, director at Outsmart says “Playout will drive efficiency and improve data communication and accountability for both classic and digital Out of Home. It’s a secure, standardised, easy to use tool and we can’t wait to bring it to market.”
After a formal pitch process in 2022 including a number of major tech consultancies, Outsmart has appointed Adwanted UK (formally Mediatel) to build and maintain “Playout” for the next 3 years, with the expectation that it will continue long after and become as foundational a part of OOH as Route and SPACE.
Greg Grimmer CEO of Adwanted UK, said: “As the UK media’s favourite adtech supplier we were delighted that Outsmart asked us to pitch for an additional product to add to the work we do already for the sector. To win this versus some extremely large and capable competitors gives me great pleasure but due to the quality of our work doesn’t surprise me in the least.”
Playout will be secure, standardised and easy to use. It will launch during summer 2023, and follows previous innovations in OOH standards such as OpenDirect and OpenRTB.
The system will be independently audited and accredited once it has been fully built and launched, and it will present future opportunities to better measure OOH in ROI studies e.g. marketing mix modelling and econometrics.
For more information please contact tim@outsmart.org.uk
