Audience

Audience is the group of people who have a real opportunity to see an ad: how many they are, and who they are. On a public screen, it is estimated from traffic, not counted from clicks.

How is it measured?

In front of a digital out-of-home (DOOH) screen, in a street, a mall or a station, nobody logs in and nobody clicks. So the audience is always an estimate, built from what can be observed around the screen.

The first question is volume: how many people pass the screen, and when? Footfall counters, sensors and mobility data answer it, and audience institutes such as CIM in Belgium turn it into figures you can compare from one screen to the next.

The second question is profile: who are those people? The answer comes from the place itself (a station, a gym, a shopping street), the time of day, and anonymized, aggregated data about the area.

Audience is not the same as reach. Audience describes who is in front of the screen. Reach counts how many different people your campaign touched over its whole run.

Example

Illustrative example: a screen at a mall entrance sees around 1,000 people per hour on a Saturday afternoon, mostly families. The same screen sees around 100 people per hour on a Tuesday morning, mostly retirees and staff. Same screen, two very different audiences. A toy brand and a pharmacy would not book the same hours.

Why it matters when you plan a DOOH campaign

A screen does not pick one person out of the crowd. Everyone who passes sees the same message at the same moment. So the useful question is not “who will see my ad?” but “where and when are my customers there?”

That changes how you plan. Start from places and hours rather than profiles: the streets around your store, the station your customers pass through, the time slots when they are around. The finer you go, down to the neighborhood, the closer the screen’s audience gets to your own customers, and the less you pay for people who will never walk through your door.

Ask every seller the same two things: how the audience figure was estimated, and for which hours.