IV. Noticeability is a problematic measure conceptually. It is even harder to develop a good practical measure of this construct.

While virtually all measures of advertising effectiveness can be critiqued, measuring noticeability has its own flaws. Different consumers will respond to different creative strategies in different manners. It is dangerous to make predictions about “average consumers” in this context, as variance among consumers may be great. Different people prefer different types of creative, have different favorite colors, different font preferences, etc. Thus, developing a “one size fits all” approach in which a certain creative strategy is deemed superior for all consumers is highly questionable. Certainly, noticeability is not as accurate a measure of how many people see a billboard in comparison to actually asking consumers whether they recognize or recall a message.

Simply making a message more noticeable does not mean it is easier to draw conclusions from the message (Stewart and Martin 1994). There are contradictory findings from noticeability studies in both the marketing and psychological literatures. For example, in the warnings literature, studies have shown neither size of the lettering in a warning nor the background color significantly increased the noticeability and legibility of a message (Popper and Murray 1989). Laughery et al. (1993) found that adding more features designed to draw attention to a warning did not significantly influence the degree to which people notice a warning message. Contradictory results suggest that the effect of specific characteristics of messages such as color, size, and lettering are dependent on the context in which they are used (Stewart and Martin 1994). Thus, with no clear conclusion on what factors constitute a generalizable, noticeable message, distinguishing between billboards on this type of basis is not advisable.

Additional difficulties arise in terms of developing a practical measure of noticeability in the outdoor arena. One major reason is the application of field and laboratory studies to the real world is problematic. Developing estimates of parameters based on experiments conducted under forced exposure or exposure under circumstances where the respondent knows his/her movements are being tracked introduces bias into studies that may compromise external validity. Researchers have argued that experiments suffer from several limitations including the control that is afforded the researcher which is not available in the real world, the fact that experiments have no consequences (short or long term) for the respondents, and the fact that experiments have a sudden beginning and a sudden end (Winer 1999; Wells 1993). Moreover, the idea of making downward adjustments in exposure based on physical attributes such as size, type of road, angle to the road, as obtained by surveys in large metropolitan areas is problematic as it is not representative of all billboard sites. Particularly in rural areas, more billboards are likely to be placed in easy to see locations. Additionally, as was previously discussed, the impact of passive exposures should not be underestimated.

Conclusion

In today’s media environment, the exposures to a message provided by outdoor advertising are more valuable than ever. Because it is increasingly difficult to get messages noticed and/or remembered, the uncluttered environment in which outdoor ads are seen (often with high frequency) helps to overcome problems of media fragmentation and selective perception. Moreover, the context specific advantages based on geography and the advertising message being seen at a time close to when the purchase decision is made, are key advantages of outdoor advertising exposures. As a result, the implementation of a measurement system based on VAI that discounts some outdoor advertising exposures makes little sense, particularly since similar adjustments are not being proposed for other, more fragmented media. Especially given research indicating the value of repeated exposure, including passive exposure, audience measurement in outdoor advertising should focus heavily on exposures, and Wall Street should recognize the increased value of these exposures.