From circulation to audience

The role of circulation in measurement

Flow or circulation describes movement observed or estimated within a defined area, route or environment. It provides an important input for OOH and represents one stage in the path toward the audience of a placement, screen or campaign.

Qualification adds location, time window, audience presence, visibility zone, ad delivery and viewing conditions. Each element describes a specific part of the relationship between media delivery and audience.

Audience is built through successive qualifications

Measurement organizes a progression from circulation to presence, opportunity to see, likelihood to see and impact. Each stage remains connected to its definition, supporting source and declared transformation.

Reach and frequency follow this qualification. Reach expresses the unique people exposed within a declared universe and period. Frequency represents the average number of exposures or impacts per person reached.

• Circulation: movement observed or estimated within the defined spatial and temporal scope.
• Audience presence: people within the relevant measurement or visibility zone during a defined time window.
• Opportunity to See (OTS): potential exposure created by audience presence in the visibility zone during ad delivery.
• Likelihood to See (LTS): qualification of OTS through angle, direction, distance, duration, obstructions and environmental conditions.
• Audience impact: combination of qualified ad exposure and qualified audience presence in the relevant interval.
• Visible impact: an audience impact that meets the visibility criteria defined by the declared methodology.

DOOH connects time, delivery and presence

DOOH inventory changes over time. Proof of play records the reproduction of the creative by the player or delivery system. Audience presence data describes the available audience in the environment, while visibility rules qualify the opportunity.

The commercial metric results from a coherent integration of scheduling, playlogs, ad exposure, audience presence and duration. Preserving the identity of each layer makes the result explainable and its production path verifiable.

Comparability starts with the unit of reference

The term impression is used differently across platforms and standards. In OOH and DOOH, audience impact and visible impact make the reported unit and its relationship with presence, exposure and visibility explicit.

Methodological disclosure presents the universe, period, sources, deduplication, visibility adjustments and treatment of uncertainty. This transparency shows where comparison is valid, where additional care is required and which developments can improve metric quality.

Global principles, market-specific application

Global guidelines converge on principles while documenting different approaches across markets. This diversity shows that rigor depends on clear definitions, requirements and limitations, with choices suited to the sources and governance of each context.

Progress in each market is supported by shared definitions and an architecture that can evolve as inventory, coverage, data sources and governance mature.