OVAB’s Digital Media Summit

Chris Sheldrake

Today the Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau (OVAB) announced the public release of its Audience Metrics Guidelines in conjunction with OVAB’s Digital Media Summit: Focus on Digital OOH event on the 29th October, 2008 at The Grand Hyatt in New York City.

That event aims to bring together senior marketers and media agency professionals and is cleverly designed to educate the advertising community on the power and efficacy of the medium.

Since its inception in 2007, OVAB’s mission of course has been to make it easier for advertisers and agencies to evaluate, plan and buy digital and video out-of-home advertising networks through the development of guidelines, best practices and standards.

Suzanne Alecia, president of OVAB told us “The goal of OVAB is to elevate digital out-of-home advertising networks from an alternative media tactic to an indispensible strategic component of a brand’s overall marketing communications plan,”

She added “We’ve worked tirelessly over the past several months to address the issues that the advertising community has noted as barriers to achieving that goal; common audience data reporting by our networks was the primary issue cited. The Guidelines, when put into practice, are designed to give the networks, the research providers and the agencies a rule book in order to capture common audience metrics. This data can then be used by advertisers and agencies to compare our media to other media.”

OVAB’s Agency Advisory Board, made up of 33 executives from top agencies in the US, were a crucial part of the Guidelines development we are told.

Alan Schulman, Chief Creative Officer of UDIG, The Digital Innovations Group said “OVAB was smart in their approach to these Guidelines. They collaborated with us and we determined together a fair and logical set of guidelines that will help the industry come together”

OVAB is holding Guidelines training seminars for their member companies’ sales teams and has presented the Guidelines to nearly 30 media research executives at the major media planning agencies, many of whom are on the AAAA’s Media Research Committee.

The reception from the agency community has been positive, and it’s been described as a much needed step in order to grow the industry.

Full details of the Guidelines and its implications will be unveiled at OVAB’s Digital Media Summit event on 29th October in a presentation by Suzanne Alecia.

Confirmed speakers for that event include some pretty heavy hitters in the media industry:

  • Diana Dayrit, Owner, switch f/x
  • Sandy Drayton, VP of Communications, Michael J. Fox Foundation
  • Katy Ferguson VP Account Director, Initiative
  • Jim Forrest, SVP of Advertising & Brand Insights, OTX
  • Emily Fried, Director of Consumer Marketing, A&E/History
  • Tyler Helms, Account Director, Deutsch
  • Katie Hood, CEO, Michael J. Fox Foundation
  • Rob Jayson, EVP Planning Director, Zenith
  • Gerald J. Johnson, Vice President of Marketing Communication, ConAgra
  • Kris Magel, EVP of National Broadcast, Initiative Media
  • John Marson, Senior Director of Brand Marketing, Kraft
  • Andrea McAteer, SVP Group Account Director, Initiative
  • Bob Mitchell, VP of Consumer & Affiliate Marketing, Fuse Network
  • Patrick Moorhead, Director of Emerging Media, Avenue A/Razorfish
  • Christine Peterson, VP Digital Media Director, Carat
  • Patrick Quinn, Owner, PQ Media
  • Alan Schulman, Chief Creative Director, UDIG, The Digital Innovations Group
  • Jim Spaeth, Partner, Sequent Partners
  • Vic Walia, Senior Director of Brand Marketing, hotels.com
  • Daniel Wilkins, President, n2

For more information or to register for the one-day event at the Grand Hyatt in New York City on October 29th, log onto http://www.ovab.org/summit/

ABOUT OVAB

Founded in 2007, the Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau (OVAB) represents leading out-of-home video networks and the advertising community that is actively engaged in planning, buying and evaluating the effectiveness of the medium. On behalf of its members, OVAB seeks to foster ongoing collaboration between agencies and out-of-home video advertising networks; provide
standards, best practices and industry-wide research; and promote the effectiveness of out-of-home video advertising.


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