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.