Penny-wise, $1.3 Billion Short: Why Out-of-Home's Obsession with Currency Standards Is Costing Us the Bigger Conversation

I recently visited Hong Kong and Malaysia for the first time. Different countries, vastly different cultures, and yes, different currencies. Two incredible places to add to the itinerary.

As a dad traveling alone, I had the unheralded duty of finding trinkets that would satisfy my two Gen Alpha kids - read: hyper-aware of the world and high thresholds to impress.

And so I went shopping - note: I am not a shopper.

It was agonizing. I debated. I changed my mind. I picked things up, put them back, and circled the stall at least 3 times. I stressed over colors, second-guessed sizes, and I might have even done a bit of price haggling.

But you know what I didn't stress over? The local currency. Not once did I stop to verify the precision of the exchange rate with each vendor. I internalized an approximate exchange ratio, and then I got on with the commerce. Sure, I paid a tourist tax on a few of those trinkets but that's the cost of leaving your family back home for a week. The transactions happened, value was exchanged, and nobody got hurt from approximating the exchange rate.

Now let's talk about out-of-home.

We've Let the Currency Debate Stall the Commerce

For years, the out-of-home industry has been locked in a circular, sometimes paralyzing conversation about measurement currency. How do we count impressions? Is it OTS or LTS (or maybe ROTS)? How much will the next release impact us? Who dictates what an impression is?

These are legitimate questions. Currency matters. I'm not here to tell you it doesn't.

But I am here to say: we have let the pursuit of a perfect exchange rate prevent us from being full participants in commerce.

While we've been debating the value of a single OOH impression - refining it, auditing it, arguing about it in conference breakout rooms - the rest of the advertising world moved on. Digital channels didn't wait for a perfect currency before they started transacting. They established a workable standard, agreed on the rough exchange rate, and started doing business. They iterated, improved, and learned from live market activity, not from white papers.

And while we're still standing at the market stall with a forex app open, waiting for the perfect exchange ratio, OOH’s share of total ad spend has gradually decreased from 3.1% in 2022 to 2.7% in 2025 - translating to $500 million in lost market value since 2022 and $1.3 billion since 2017.

IPSOS is Here - Hooray! Now Let's Get to Work.

On March 31st, Geopath and OAAA announced Ipsos as the selected partner for the next generation of OOH audience measurement. A pilot launches in the second half of this year, with integration beginning in 2027 and full adoption targeted for 2028.

Let me be clear: this is good for us. Ipsos operates OOH measurement systems in over 20 markets globally, including the UK and Australia. They bring real credibility and operational experience. The industry should welcome this.

But here's my honest reaction — and I mean this as the highest possible compliment to everyone involved: let’s agree on it, and let’s move on.

Not because it doesn't matter. It matters a great deal. But because agreeing on the exchange rate should be the mundane, procedural, table-stakes part of the conversation. It's the plumbing. It's the part you get done so you can get on with building something on top of it. In a healthy market, the headline "industry agrees on how to count impressions" should carry the same excitement as "banks agree on wire transfer protocols." Essential? Absolutely. The thing that gets you fired up about our industry? Probably not.

So yes, congratulations to Geopath, OAAA, and Ipsos. Sincerely. Now let's talk about the part that should actually be exciting.

It's Not That OOH Can't Be Measured. It's That We Won't Move Past Step One.

Let's be clear about something: out-of-home is not being left behind in the performance marketing conversation because the medium is irrelevant. It's not because the data doesn't exist. It's not because measurement is impossible.

It's because we're so consumed with our own internal currency exchange that we never get to the conversations that actually matter to the people writing the checks.

Brand marketers aren't losing sleep over your viewability zone definition. Make it logical, make it consistent, and check the box.

What actually drives decisions are questions like:

• Did this campaign move the needle on sales?
• Can you design a test that isolates the incremental value of OOH?
• How does this channel fit into my media mix?
• What did we learn, and how quickly can we optimize?

These are the questions that unlock budgets. These are the conversations that earn OOH a permanent seat at the planning table. And we can't get to any of them if we're still stuck arguing about the denominator.

The Real Prize: Understanding the Customer, Not Just Counting Them

Here's where it gets exciting. Once we agree on the exchange rate, we stop counting and start learning. Every marketer — whether they're selling sneakers or software — is trying to understand the same journey: Did anyone notice our ad? Did that attention contribute to a decision? Can I prove it? Did they convert?

That's a funnel. And every step of that funnel, we have a measurement discipline ready to illuminate it — if we're ready to move past the currency debate.

Did anyone even notice? — Brand Lift. Your customer saw 4,000 commercial messages today. Your billboard was one of them. The first question isn't whether they bought — it's whether you broke through at all. Did awareness move? Did perception shift? Did you earn a place in the consideration set? Brand lift research answers the most fundamental question in advertising: in a world of infinite noise, were you heard? This is the top of the funnel, and it's where OOH has had an unfair advantage.

Who gets the credit? — Media Mix Modeling. Here's the truth that every marketer knows: no single platform deserves 100% credit for a sale. The customer saw your billboard on their morning commute. They got retargeted with a display ad at lunch. They searched for your brand name that evening, and they bought on Friday. Channel credits are correlated with their measurability, or more specifically, their ability to be included in the study. Billions are allocated across media plans, for OOH to get a bigger piece of that pie, we need a consistent delivery signal. Not a perfect one. A consistent one.

Can we prove it was us? — Match Market Testing. OOH is not deterministic. We don't have 1-to-1 measurability. We're also not a 1-to-1 medium. But that doesn't mean we can't prove impact. Think matched markets (or zips) — similar demographics, similar media environments, similar baseline sales. Activate OOH in one. Hold it out of the other. Measure the difference. This is the closest thing our industry has to a controlled experiment, and it gives CMOs the causal proof needed to defend a line item. It doesn't require impression precision to the sixth decimal. It requires consistency across the test.

Did it ring the register? — Sales Attribution. The bottom of the funnel. The one that makes CFOs sit up. Link OOH exposure to purchase behavior — loyalty data, credit card panels, retail analytics — and draw a line from the digital panel to the buy. This is where OOH stops being a "brand awareness play" and starts competing for performance dollars. Data partners exist. The methodology exists. What's been missing is the confidence in a consistent currency that connects to the transaction.

Four questions. Four disciplines. One prerequisite: a workable agreement on the value of an impression. Not a perfect one. An exchange rate that lets us get on with commerce.

Every other channel has long been focused on these conversations, and the buy-side isn't waiting for us to enter the forum.

A Call to Move Forward

I'm not arguing for sloppy measurement. I'm not saying we should accept garbage data. I'm saying we should do what every functioning market in the world does: agree on a standard that is good enough to transact on, then improve it through the act of commerce.

The trinkets I bought abroad? I probably overpaid for a few and got a deal on others. Over the course of the trip, it likely evened out. And the experience — the discovery, the participation (yes, haggling), the commerce — was worth far more than the marginal currency discrepancy.

Agree on the exchange rate. Buy the trinkets. Start proving that this channel works — not by counting impressions more precisely, but by connecting them to outcomes more decisively.

The buy-side isn't waiting for us to perfect the currency. They're waiting for us to show up with results.

I work with operators and platforms every day who are ready to have this conversation. The ones who aren't asking "how do we count better?" but "how do we prove it works?" Those are the ones winning budgets right now.

Let's stop refreshing the app and start shopping.

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Eric Kung is GM of the Americas at Moving Walls, a global digital out-of-home platform enabling media owners and advertisers to plan, activate, and measure OOH campaigns at scale.