Articles

10.1.2011 Understanding mood and engagement with digital OOH in malls

Shopping malls offer important opportunities for advertisers to target audiences in a positive and engaged mindset, according to new research from Kinetic and Clear Channel Outdoor. Shopping is one of the most popular pastimes in the UK, and by virtue of the captive audience in an appropriate mindset it is the environment in which all mainstream advertisers want to be seen. According to TGI Touchpoints, in 2010 82%of British adults visited a mall and the average adult visits a small shopping centre or mall once every three weeks.

Using technology from Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute setting up a face-tracking camera on top of a Clear Channel digital billboard. This would identify gender, approximate age and basic engagement data as well as expression mood ratings of happy, sad, impassive and alert. Contacts per shopper peaked at lunchtime during the week, but much earlier at the weekend, tailing off as time pressures increased and people were in more of a hurry. However, crucially people looked for three times longer at the weekend, showing a greater depth of engagement than weekdays, averaging four seconds - Postar defines a conscious engagement as 0.24 seconds. The technology measured engagement time in seconds per shopper, and found that the impact of the ads was 3.5 times longer at the weekend.

B.L. 10.1.2011