CEO of OAA: "A picture is worth a thousand data points."

The primary pitch to transition towards digital is measurability. Site or network traction, page views, browsing behavior and purchasing preferences can be tracked. The entire experience can evolve accordingly. A/B testing leads to a quick understanding of ROMI. It would seem that ATL’s broad reach also made it hard to measure.

We live in a world where the customer journey is often overlooked, with TG’s finding an ad for a shoe brand in a high end magazine, being impressed and searching for the shoe online for purchase intent. The credit falls to digital while the impression was made on print.

A start-up in the city of lights (Karachi, Pakistan) is measuring eyeballs & impressions – offline. Their tech competes head on and challenges reach presumption set by the big ATL players, on media and vendor sides of the table. They are disruptive and they are growing.

I sat with the CEO, Rafi Abidi, to learn more about Outdoor Advertising Assets.

The implications of your work are manifold. Measuring ATL would mean accountability of claims. So what are you doing, and how?
I’ve been associated with media all my life and have learned that OOH was extremely disorganized an unstructured. There was no audit or transparency. So at OAA, we collect static data and made the information affordable. We invested 30 months into a tech product that covers a range of verticals such as retail, education, pharma, health and consumer goods. We’re geographically spread because collecting data requires travelling of physical distances. 

Our team has mobile and web apps that are used on the field to upload pictures that are worth a thousand data points.

With regards to OOH, what’s happened in this picture of the RAV ad?
It’s a common tactic to protest payment delays. In some places, a vendor sells a display to multiple clients. Clients do not have proof that their visuals will stay on a hoarding for the agreed time frame. They pay up half a million rupees for it. That is a serious loss of impressions. Our revenue model is 1% of the advertising cost and works as an insurance. Without checks & balances like ours, performance cannot be improved.

Break it down, how are you improving said performances?
We work directly with the client and have signed on the 3rd largest media agency in Pakistan, IPSOS, as a channel partner for our tech. Our product ensures transparency. Luckily for us, people are in abundance and are not hard to find for taking the photo’s. Alternatively, we have worked with courier companies and our mobile app has a crowd sourcing element that provides a check & balance. No training required for this task, everyone knows how to use the camera on the cell phones.

Given what you have built thus far, whats the next logical evolutionary step?
We’ll start retail. Global research market is worth USD 8 billion and the dominator is Nielsen. At this point in time, 33% of the industry is retail audit, where shelf space is an indicator of market share. At 20% of the outlets, brands earn 80% of their revenue and vice versa. We need to become more vigil about optimizing on the 20% outlets. Just like online analytic’s that determines what the landing page should be, we need to get into aisle analytic’s with heat sensors to learn peak hours of aisle’s footfall.

In light of the  work you’ve piloted so far, what did you learn?
People buy what they see. Considering the anthropology of Pakistani women, the one’s with decision making power, you must keep the product at height or hip level. Keep the impulse buys next to the counter (they account for 25% of revenues). 

Couldn’t companies just do all this themselves with mystery shopping and retail audits?
It’s the TSM’s job to ensure retailer does not screw over the brand. It’s in the TSM’s best interest to report positively. So why should he report the truth? Ever seen a Cornetto inside an Omore freezer? Or a Pepsi inside a Coke fridge?

I have and its maddening. You know that another part of the customer journey is in front of the TV, so is there anything we can bring to that?
We don’t believe in sample size. In this day and age, we can extrapolate data from 100% of the market. People’s meter tracking 800 households represents 200 million Pakistani’s? TV should be internet connected like PTCL’s Smart TV. 

This is a new space, a merger between logistics, advertising, research and shopper marketing. So what do you classify it?
We consider ourselves as “Data Logistics” and see the physical world shrinking & digital world expanding. We’ll position ourselves as the FedEx of the digital world.