Outernet London launches groundbreaking real-time visitor analytics system
Outernet London has unveiled an innovative new audience measurement system set to revolutionise the way brands and clients working with Outernet measure footfall, impressions, demographics, dwell time and views.
The new Public Immersive Audience Measurement System (PIAMS) measures all audience data points every 5 mins. PIAMS marks a commitment by Outernet to deliver audience insights above and beyond current industry norms. It has been created and built in-house by the Outernet team led by Dan Patton, Director of Digital Publishing & Audience Insight along with Virgin Media O2 Business and MESHH, the spatial analytics experts. The PIAMS system is privacy safe and fully GDPR compliant.
Through O2 Motion, an anonymised and aggregated mobile data product from Virgin Media O2 Business, combined with MESHH spatial sensor data, the new system provides audience numbers for the overall Outernet district and PIAMS stores, providing a complete picture of Outernet’s audience in real time. PIAMS then matches the audience with the screen playing schedule to offer highly detailed commercial and content reporting data for Outernet clients.
Since its deployment, PIAMS has delivered a suite of actionable insights that enable Outernet to optimise content strategy by targeting verified peak traffic and engagement periods, enhance ROI reporting with validated audience reach and dwell time data, improve operational decisions around visitor flow, staffing and logistics, and support long-term strategic planning by replacing assumptions with robust, real-time behavioural evidence.
Dan Patton, Director of Digital Publishing & Audience Insight at Outernet, said:
"We are incredibly proud to launch PIAMS. It is a major leap forward in how we understand and quantify public engagement with media in physical spaces. By bringing together cutting-edge technology from Virgin Media O2 Business and Meshh, we've created a system that tells a powerful story about how audiences move, dwell, and interact with our content in real time. For our clients, that means smarter campaigns, clearer ROI and understanding campaign performance, and insight around impact at a level the industry has never seen before."
Andrew Gillham, O2 Motion Business Development Director at Virgin Media O2 Business, said:
“Outernet’s new audience measurement system showcases the strength of anonymised and aggregated real-time data when applied in digital advertising. With O2 Motion’s Real Time Location Insights data combined with Meshh sensor data in this way, the platform will provide useful audience insights for this unique location.”
Caroline McGuckian, CEO of Meshh said:
“The results from this partnership are genuinely groundbreaking. This is the culmination of 9 months of research, planning, testing and validation. The data generated is extremely robust because it is measured in real-time and does not rely on extrapolation from a small sample.”
Emily Alcorn, Chief Effectiveness Officer UK, Talon said:
“Outernet have taken a comprehensive approach to their PIAMS (Public Immersive Audience Measurement system), leveraging spatial sensors and mobile data to accurately measure the audience engagement of their inventory. This is no small feat to combine technology and methodology at this level…. very impressive!”