Titan returns panels to Postar measuring

by Isabella Piasecka Media Week 15-Apr-08, 07:38

LONDON - Titan Outdoor has bowed to industry pressure and returned around 750 panels to Postar's outdoor measurement system that it had previously removed to form a new pool directed at local advertisers.

Titan is physically segregating its roadside estate by creating a new local advertiser-focused pool.

As part of this initiative, Titan is nearly doubling its direct sales team and upgrading its national sales team in a bid to offer a more targeted service to advertisers. It has also removed some of its poor-quality panels.

From the May audit, Titan will list all of its panels under Postar, the outdoor audience measurement system, with one dataset for its national sales and a new, separate listing for its local sales, provisionally called Focus.

In the latest three-month Postar audit, published in February, Titan's panels fell by 888 to a total of 7,954, down from 8,842 panels in November last year.

Titan claimed the panels that it took out of Postar were being redirected at local advertisers, who are much less likely to trade on average audience data than national brands.

But the move angered rival contractors, who said that Titan was acting unfairly, since removing the panels artificially boosts its average audience score.

Jon Slatkin, Titan chief executive, said: "We took those panels off Postar in a bid to improve the clarity of our estate, but it seems there are some concerns over transparency. We're not trying to hide anything, so we're putting those panels back from May, excluding a few we have removed."

Slatkin added: "We drew a line in the sand at the end of March... the line doesn't mean that if a national advertiser for some reason wants one of those local panels that we would turn them away.

"But our national sales teams won't actively and aggressively sell those panels."

The move to return the panels has been welcomed by key outdoor figures. Mungo Knott, managing director of UK sales at Streetbroadcast, said: "The industry should have as many panels that can be classified audited correctly. The feeling is it [Titan] made a decision without properly thinking through the consequences.

"When it was explained to them, they felt it was appropriate to put the panels back."
Dave McEvoy, marketing director at JCDecaux, said: "We're a great supporter of Postar. It's a gold standard that shows the quality of offering in the marketplace. It shouldn't be played around with."