Methodology
How the measurement works
The question behind every audience number in out-of-home is the same one: how many people went past this panel, and how many of them could actually see it. Here is how we answer it — in plain terms first, with the detail underneath each step for anyone who needs to check our working.
Six steps, in order
- 1
Observe
We start from where phones actually are.
Anonymised, aggregated mobile location signals, processed in bulk. No identity, no individual profile, and nothing that identifies a person is retained or reported. Every figure published is an aggregate.
- 2
Locate
We work out where each device lives and works.
Repeated overnight and daytime presence resolves a home and a work area for each device in the panel. This is what separates a resident from a commuter from a visitor — a distinction that matters enormously for a taxi rank and not at all for a highway billboard.
- 3
Scale
We scale the panel up to the real population.
The panel is a sample, not the country. Panel residents in each small area are compared against that area's census population to produce a scaling factor, so a suburb where the panel happens to be thin is not reported as a suburb where fewer people live.
- 4
Attribute
We count who passed each individual panel.
Scaled movement is intersected with the physical position and orientation of each site to produce contacts for that specific panel — not for the road, the suburb, or an average of the area.
- 5
Adjust for visibility
We discount the ones who could not realistically have seen it.
Contacts are multiplied by a visibility factor reflecting orientation to the flow of traffic or pedestrians, viewing distance and approach speed, obstruction and visual clutter, and the size and placement of the panel. The result is VAC.
- 6
Verify on the ground
We send someone to check the panel is really there, and really up.
FOONA, our field network, captures dated and located evidence of the physical panel and its creative. This is the step no modelled currency performs, and the reason a modelled audience number and a delivered campaign are not the same claim.
What comes out
Three figures per panel per period, and one relationship between them worth stating explicitly, because it is where most confusion about out-of-home audiences begins.
VAC = opportunity to see × visibility factor
Passing a panel is an opportunity to see it. The visibility factor is the discount for the fact that not everyone who passes a panel is in a position to look at it — it reflects the panel's orientation to the flow, the distance and speed of approach, obstruction and clutter, and the panel's size and placement. VAC is the figure after that discount.
- Reach
- The estimated number of unique people exposed to a site over the measurement period. Counted once per person, not once per passing.
- VAC
- Visibility Adjusted Contacts. Passing a site is not the same as seeing what is on it, so contacts are adjusted by a visibility factor derived from the physical characteristics of the panel and its setting.
- Average frequency
- Total contacts divided by reach over the measurement period — the average number of exposures per person reached.
What we never do
Pikaboo measures crowds, not people. The inputs are anonymised and aggregated before they reach us, we hold no identities and build no individual profiles, and every figure we publish or report is an aggregate over many devices. Nothing in the system is designed to answer a question about a named person, and nothing we report could.
Field verification records the panel and its creative — the structure, the poster, the date and the location. It is evidence about advertising inventory, not about the public.
Where it is weaker
Every measurement method has a shape, including this one. These are the limits we know about and design around, and we would rather you read them here than discover them later.
- A device is not a person. Phones are shared, and people carry more than one.
- Location accuracy varies by setting. Dense city blocks and indoor environments are harder than open roadside.
- Unusual routines — night shifts especially — can misplace a device's home or work area.
- Resident and visitor views answer different questions. A resident-weighted view will undercount a destination site; a national view will include audiences a local campaign is not buying.
Built against the international definitions
Pikaboo computes reach, VAC and frequency using the definitions set out in the ESOMAR Global Guidelines for Outdoor Advertising and the World Out of Home Organisation's recommended approach to digital out-of-home audience measurement. Those are the references on which out-of-home currencies are recognised internationally, and they are the references this system was built against.
Pikaboo is not an accredited currency and does not claim to be one. Independent methodological validation is work in progress, and we would rather say so here than be asked. The methodology is documented in full and open to third-party audit on request.
Ask us a harder question
If you plan, sell or audit out-of-home and something on this page does not satisfy you, that is the useful conversation. Send us the question.