Practical Measures to Increase Transit Advertising Revenues (2009)

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22 Media Planner Quantitative Research Objective The main research objectives were to understand media planners’ current familiarity with, usage of, and attitudes and perceptions of transit advertising and to determine what could motivate them to increase their usage of transit adver- tising in the media plans they recommend to advertisers. More specifically, the research team wanted to come out of the research with enough information and insights to be able to position transit advertising relative to its competitors; rec- ommend a marketing strategy relating to both advertisers and media planners; and develop an agenda of action items for transit agencies, their sales contractors and the industry association. Approach To inform research planning, the research team conducted telephone interviews with both media planners and advertis- ing sales contractors. A key insight from these preliminary interviews was the extent to which media planners influence advertisers’ media decisions. This insight led to the decision to prioritize research among media planners over research among advertisers. (The interview guide used for these preliminary interviews is attached as Appendix D.) Sample Design Knowledge of the media planning industry, along with the information gained from the preliminary interviews with media planners and advertising sales contractors, led to the following sample design: • 75 generalist media planners – 38 with clients who are predominantly national adver- tisers – 37 with clients who are predominantly regional and local advertisers • 75 out-of-home media specialists – 37 with clients who are predominantly national adver- tisers – 38 with clients who are predominantly regional and local advertisers The assumptions were that generalist media planners would not be as familiar with transit media as out-of-home media spe- cialists and that greater approval and greater usage can go along with greater familiarity; therefore, the samples in these two seg- ments needed to be large enough to enable comparison of the responses. Similarly, the research team presumed that media planners working with clients who advertise nationally would have different perspectives on transit media than media plan- ners working with clients who advertise regionally and locally. Participation Criteria To qualify as a respondent, individuals had to meet the following criteria: • Be employed by an advertising agency or a media agency, not by an advertiser. • Work in media planning, not buying or research. (Media buying and research are distinct areas of specialization. But most importantly for the purposes of this research, the media planners, not the buyers or researchers, are the ones deciding which media to recommend to advertisers.) • Have the opportunity to work with out-of-home media in their current position. (Media planners with no opportu- nity to recommend out-of-home media of any type are of no concern to this study.) • Be responsible for recommending out-of-home media to clients or to the people who make recommendations. (The research team wanted to make sure the survey captured the C H A P T E R 2 Research Approach

23 responses of senior people who have real responsibility for the media recommendations that get presented to clients, not the junior media planners who are on the media plan- ning team, but who do not make the actual decisions.) • Be familiar enough with transit—whether they recommend it or not—to be able to answer questions about the medium. Usage of transit media was not a criterion. The research team specifically wanted to include “non-recommenders” for their ability to express what makes transit media unappealing or not useful to them. The research team used personal contacts and networking, bought a list of media planners and advertised on the Media Planner and Buyer website to identify candidates for the sur- vey. Once the telephone screener confirmed that a candidate met the criteria for participation, the participant was emailed the URL for the on-line survey. Once candidates completed the on-line survey, which took about 30 minutes, they were sent an American Express gift card in the amount of $100. Survey Design The research team custom designed the survey to answer numerous questions that, analyzed together, would inform development of a robust strategy for transit advertising growth. The questions were grouped into 10 sections: • Section 1: Screening and Classification Questions. These questions included the type of agency that respondents worked for, the size of their agency by annual billings, whether they worked primarily with local/regional adver- tisers or national advertisers, etc. These responses allowed the collected data to be “cut” and searched for meaningful differences between sub-segments. • Section 2: Out-of-Home and Transit Media Usage. Fre- quency of use, the portion of the media plan typically devoted to out-of-home and transit media, and the typical level of spending on out-of-home and transit media were requested in this section. Also, level of familiarity with transit media, transit’s competitive set, top-of-mind impressions of transit advertising’s audience, and specific modes of transit adver- tising used were requested. • Section 3: Effectiveness of Transit Advertising. This sec- tion asked media planners to select the media and market- ing objectives that they believed transit media to be highly effective at achieving. This was crucial information: a fun- damental obstacle to greater transit media usage could very well be its perceived inability to deliver on basic media and marketing objectives. Respondents were asked to do this exercise for trains separately from buses to explore whether media planners view these two types of transit advertising differently. The research team also split the sample and asked each half of the respondents to go through the same exercise for one of the two other most popular forms of out- of-home advertising: billboards and place-based media. Respondents were then asked to select from among transit, billboards, place-based media, television and the Internet the one medium that was the most effective at achieving each of the given objectives. • Section 4: Media Planner Beliefs and Attitudes. This sec- tion asked for the level of agreement with a series of state- ments about media planning in general and transit media in particular. For example, respondents were asked for the degree to which they agreed with the statement, “I’m com- fortable recommending transit media to clients.” The sur- vey also asked about transit’s competitive set: was transit most often competing for media dollars versus other out- of-home media or versus all other media? Also in this sec- tion, one of the few open-ended questions was asked: which consumers do media planners think of as the audience for transit advertising? • Section 5: Image of Transit Advertising. Respondents were asked to rate the degree to which specific attributes describe transit advertising. The research team was looking for impressions of transit advertising’s image (e.g., “down- scale”) that might be obstacles. • Section 6: Desirability of Features of Media. In this sec- tion, respondents were asked to indicate how desirable it is for a medium to have a credible audience measurement system, to deliver exactly what was purchased, to have really knowledgeable sales representatives, etc. Although these features are not primary drivers of usage (the primary criterion is whether the medium can deliver the media or marketing objective), they matter to the media planner’s level of comfort and confidence in recommending the medium to their clients. • Section 7: Rating of Transit’s and Competitors’ Abilities to Deliver Media Features. Having just indicated which features of media are important, respondents were now asked how successfully transit delivers on those features. The research team was looking for what transit is perceived to do very well as a medium and whether its strongest fea- tures were of high or low importance to media planners. In addition, half of the respondents were asked to rate bill- boards and the other half to rate place-based media for comparison. • Section 8: Satisfaction with Sales Representatives. In this section, respondents were asked about their sales represen- tatives. Were their sales representatives dedicated to transit media or did they represent other media, as well? How did their sales representatives perform along specific criteria, and what were the respondents’ overall satisfactions with their sales representatives? The research team wanted this information to help evaluate whether the representatives

24 who have responsibility for both transit and billboards give transit its fair share of attention and effort. • Section 9: New Media. Innovation is a key driver of con- tinued growth of any business. In this section, the research team was looking to get a sense of which new media ideas for transit might spark additional interest on the part of media planners. • Section 10: Final Suggestions. In this final question, respondents were asked to write in their biggest ideas for increasing the attractiveness of transit media to them- selves and their clients. The survey instrument, as seen online, is attached as Appen- dix A of this report. Analytic Plan The analytic plan called for analysis comparing sub- segments. The main comparisons were between generalist media planners and out-of-home specialists. Generalist media planners with clients who advertise nationally were also com- pared with generalist media planners with clients who advertise regionally or locally. Differences were considered significant at the 90% confidence level (i.e., there is a 10% or lower chance that the differences observed in the data happened by chance). Secondary analyses included a comparison of transit enthu- siasts (high level of usage) with those who rarely or never rec- ommend transit. Also the responses of media planners who are served by transit-dedicated sales representatives were compared to those of media planners who are served by sales representa- tives who sell multiple media types. Several other “cuts” of the data are reported in the next chapter when the comparison revealed findings of significance. Advertiser Interviews The research team chose to emphasize research with media planners over research with advertisers because of media plan- ners’ strong influence over advertisers’ decisions. (This influ- ence was corroborated in the media planner research, as will be seen in Chapter 3.) However, as the ultimate decision makers, advertisers are critical voices in a study concerning the appeal of transit media. The research plan with advertisers was to conduct 30-minute telephone interviews of marketing and/or media decision makers across a variety of industries, national as well as local/regional, but all in the consumer products sector. The advertisers, like the media planners, had to have been able to consider transit, but did not have to have used transit. The research team interviewed 14 advertisers in several dif- ferent industries. Questions focused on perceptions of tran- sit media’s image and effectiveness, as well as barriers to greater usage of transit. The interview guide is attached as Appendix B. Advertising Sales Contractor Interviews Whereas media planners and advertisers are the buyers of transit media, advertising sales contractors are in many instances the sellers. For this study to be complete, it needed to include information from executives as well as senior sales personnel about how they pitch transit media to clients, what sells, what does not sell, and what obstacles and opportunities they perceived for greater transit advertising sales. The plan was to interview a variety of advertising sales con- tractors, including those with many transit contracts as well as those with only a modest number of transit sales contracts. The interview guide is attached as Appendix C. Transit Agency Survey As the owners of transit advertising assets, transit agency marketing executives were the final important voice in this study; therefore, it was important to survey public transit agencies for their views on and experiences with growth. Tran- sit agencies’ points of view on which products have the ability to generate the most advertising revenue growth needed to be understood as well as the level at which transit agencies are engaging new technologies in the advertising space they offer. The survey sent to 300 public transit marketing executives is attached as Appendix E.