Route

Route is the joint industry currency responsible for audience measurement of out-of-home advertising in Great Britain. Based in London and owned by the out-of-home industry, the organization provides the data used by media owners, agencies and advertisers to plan, buy and evaluate campaigns across the country. Route's measurement combines a large-scale travel survey, in which participants carry GPS meters to capture their real journeys, with data on the location and visibility of advertising frames and modeling that estimates who is likely to see each placement.

This allows the service to produce audience estimates for campaigns of any scale, from a single frame to nationwide, multi-format buys running across many weeks. The currency covers a wide range of environments including roadside billboards, bus and rail advertising, London Underground, street furniture, retail and other place-based locations, as well as digital screens. Route continually develops its methodology to reflect changing travel behavior and the growth of digital out-of-home, and it has commissioned new contracts to modernize data collection, modeling and delivery, including the use of machine learning and synthetic datasets to represent population movement in greater detail.

Access is provided through analytical tools and data feeds that integrate with planning systems. As an independent, industry-governed body, Route aims to give the market a trusted, transparent and comparable measure of out-of-home audiences. By underpinning transactions with robust, granular data, it helps advertisers invest in the medium with confidence and supports the continued evolution of out-of-home in the United Kingdom.