VMO has been in the fortunate position to have invested heavily in audience measurement devices across our digital screen network since 2014 and incorporated the data into our insights platform DART. Simply, DART (Digital-Outdoor Audience in Real-Time) utilises anonymised facial recognition software to report on-screen engagement across 18 demographic profiles on a second-by-second basis, providing insights by time-of-day and day-week.

In real-time DART measures the viewing habits of over 10 million Australians across 900 essential service destinations. DART’s unique insights have been transformative to the business in the past 8 weeks and I’d like to share some of the trends we have been measuring.

CONSUMER TRENDS IN RETAIL

In response to government restrictions, paired with an influx of people working from home, we’re seeing consumers shop almost exclusively in their community. We’re seeing consistent visitation across our small-medium, high-transacting local retail centres, which have become key community hubs as consumers focus on essentials such as grocery, pharmacy and convenience goods.

Panic Buying behaviours have been well documented, however, DART has deepened our understanding, establishing that footfall increased alongside basket size, with an +11% increase in traffic vs. the baseline. Stockpiling quickly followed panic buying. Trips to the supermarket were larger, but our data showed that they were slightly less frequent, and we witnessed traffic numbers steadily decline. 

A distinct turning point was the week commencing 29th March, whereby the government’s directive to stay home was observed, and consumers made use of their stockpiled goods and move to Top-Up Shopping. We’re seeing fewer spikes and more consistency in audience numbers in April. Using the past 3 weeks as an indicator, the market is now entering a ‘new normal’ as traffic numbers are increasing and people enter a new phase. As habitual shopping patterns return, VMO has seen week-on-week audience growth of +5.4%.

Interestingly, we are seeing consumers shopping at their local centre much more frequently in the earlier part of the day, with visitation tapering off after midday. We expect this trend to continue over the coming weeks as a large portion of Australians continue to work from home, and essential workers and the vulnerable have access to designated morning shopping hours.

CONSUMER TRENDS IN PETRO-CONVENIENCE

The petro-convenience sector has undergone a transformative period in the past few years, with the integration of premium retail and lifestyle services. The premiumisation of petro sites has positioned the network strongly to help communities during the pandemic, satisfying consumers needs for both petrol and a local convenience store.

The first three weeks of the pandemic could be characterised as Business-as-Usual with no direct impact on traffic as people still visited stations for their essential fuel services. However, over the following two weeks, consumers have made the most of record low fuel prices and the availability of essential grocery items such as toilet paper or hand sanitiser. Whilst the past week has demonstrated a return to baseline audience levels, we anticipate a steady increase as people return to work, children go back to school and more local businesses and places of interest re-open their full services.

THE FUTURE

OOH is far from closed for business. Our data shows that an attentive audience does exist, and you can still influence them directly in proximity to your sales channel within essential services destinations. More importantly, VMO believes the Coronavirus pandemic has the power to transform the outdoor sector at large, pushing the industry forward to adopt a more robust, flexible and real-time measurement platform.

VMO will continue to measure the market conditions as the COVID-19 situation develops and update agencies and clients on how to make informed decisions based on real-time consumer behaviour.