No. 1 Goal For "In-Store Advertising Becomes A Measured Medium": Confirmation Of Placement

The new research study, "In-Store Advertising Becomes a Measured Medium," undertaken by POPAI with the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), is tackling one of the most vexing issues confronting the POP advertising industry: confirmation of placement of POP advertising. Without such information, advocates for POP advertising are unable to credibly make industry-wide assertions about the medium's cost- or sales-effectiveness.

POPAI's plan for confirming placement includes arranging for auditors to physically enter a representative sample of grocery stores from 22 markets around the United States and visually confirm the presence of advertising. Auditors collect this information, which is found: 1) on the main shelf or primary stocking locations for participating product categories and brands; and 2) on off-shelf locations like product displays featuring these same categories.

In this process, auditors categorize individual POP advertising sightings and locations (lobbies, endcaps, floor and in-aisle displays) into classifications to enable quantitative analysis. This auditing procedure is repeated weekly in order to obtain estimates of: 1) confirmation of placement, 2) cost effectiveness and 3) sales effectiveness.

Unlike POP advertising, other major ad media enjoy existing methods for supplying evidence that the media buy was actually placed. For broadcast, this checking often consists of an affidavit and schedule; also, a copy of the actual ad is often provided. Print verification is obtained from tearsheets and an independent service, the Publishers Information Bureau (PIB).

Once the study is completed, it will afford valuable learnings concerning the number of pieces of POP advertising per store, the number of weeks during which POP advertising was up in-store and the store locations — lobby, endcaps, etc. — in which the POP had been placed.

Necessarily, POPAI's work is undertaken on behalf of the entire industry. However, there is clearly much interest in individual tracking on the part of particular producer and client companies. For example, a number of individual companies may want to use the industry benchmarks obtained by the POPAI/ARF study in tandem with individualized tracking in order to glean a clearer understanding of their particular company's processes for distributing and tracking POP advertising.

For more information on POPAI's research efforts, contact Paula Payton, vice president, research, at (202) 530-3024/ppayton@popai.com.