IRL Consulting creates data products that make extracting location-specific insights easy, empowering organisations to make better decisions that have an impact at a local level. By combining traditional static geospatial datasets with our bespoke high accuracy mobility data feed, we are able to take the guesswork and the delays out of place-based decision making. What makes our mobility data particularly well suited to OOH (Out of Home) is that it gives us the ability to model full consumer journeys in detail, rather than just where vehicles drive or where browsing takes place. This means target demographic or consumption focused OOH planning is a reality at a site level across almost all formats and environments.

IRL offers two product categories: stand-alone datasets and product platforms. Our standard datasets can be used in clients’ own platform(s) and include:

• Demographics by suburb
• Consumption expenditure by suburb
• Researched POI
• Visitation base (standard visitation profiles for every geography in the country)
• Relational matrix (how every geography in the country relates to every other)

We also generate custom datasets to match client requirements.

Our product platforms are optimised to get the best out of our data. They shorten the time to insight and make previously complicated data sets available to the layperson.  IRL product platforms include: 

• Mobility Metrics Dashboard
• MAYA (a self service mapping, forecasting and reporting platform).

These platforms are customised to match the use case for each client and industry.

Tackling the OOH challenges

The OOH data landscape faces several challenges, including the lack of a single dataset that can measure the full range of OOH touch points across all South African consumers. Existing planning data is infrequently updated, and alternative datasets are complicated, expensive, and time-consuming to use. IRL’s suite of data and tools address these issues by providing a comprehensive, intuitive and user-friendly solution.

One of the key benefits of IRL’s products for sales teams and OOH strategists is the ability to dynamically profile their site audiences using demographics, category expenditure and geo-behavioural histories. Media owners and strategists can use these metrics to define target audiences by site according to their income, what they typically spend their money on and what brands’ outlets they prefer.  In other words, they can better match campaigns to consumers.

These tools help media owners and strategists identify opportunities, sell, package, plan, and measure campaigns across any combination of their OOH inventories.

In this example, a luxury vehicle brand was launching a new car on a very limited budget and wanted to better understand where to buy OOH inventories to reach South Africa’s top income brackets. IRL used its mobility sample to create a visitation map of where ultra high earners can be found at highest densities. The client was able to use this map to optimise their OOH holding to more efficiently target this hard to reach audience.

In this example, we identified locations at which the highest density of footfall could be observed for users that had visited a Fast Food store. Our client used this data to identify inventory that better targets category users.

In this example we observe two competing brands’ ability to attract residents of various Worcester suburbs to any of their stores. By combining this data with our consumption expenditure potential data, IRL identified that brand 2’s penetration against customers in central Worcester was lacking, suggesting a need for better marketing locally.

 Strategists can use this functionality nationally to identify and prioritise media budgets against regional and town level objectives.

Measuring Performance

Another benefit is the ability to measure site performance for any OOH inventory. IRL uses its mobility panel to model monthly footfall at a fine resolution in every location in South Africa. Media owners and strategists can use this metric to optimise inventory and campaign planning and quantify campaign exposure. By enriching this performance model, IRL can then help users prioritise inventory based on audience expenditure potential.

In the examples below we can see how Covid Lockdown levels and the 2021 Riots affected the performance of a multi-format OOH campaign.

Total Campaign Performance:

Site Level Demographics and Performance:

Site Level Expenditure Potential:

IRL’s products also help optimise inventory and campaign mix. For example, IRL uses its mobility panel to model proportional monthly duplication of audience across any combination of sites. Media owners and strategists can use this metric to optimise campaigns for increased reach (less duplication) or increased frequency (more frequency).

All of this capability comes together in IRL’s MAYA platform, where IRL’s campaign building tools allow users to make informed decisions about geographical budget splits and where to focus efforts on finding inventory.

In conclusion, IRL’s suite of data and tools provides a comprehensive solution for media owners and strategists in the OOH industry. These products help address the challenges of the OOH data landscape by providing up-to-date and user-friendly data and insights that empower OOH specialists to make better decisions, regardless of the OOH medium, client category or audience segment that they are selling or planning against.