Credit: OMA
Australia's out-of-home industry will switch to a rebuilt audience currency on March 16, with all 63 members of the Outdoor Media Association committing to the overhauled MOVE system. A soft launch follows on March 9.
OMA CEO Elizabeth McIntyre said the industry unity behind the technology is the bigger story.
"This is a remarkable legacy and vision from our shareholders, who agreed to put the industry's interests first and establish a standardised currency that everyone would adopt," she said.
Getting 63 competitors to agree on one methodology, down to how shared viewing time is allocated across formats, is rare. McIntyre said it has not been achieved elsewhere.
"I think everyone is very jealous that we're so united as an industry, because that just isn't seen around the world," she said.
OMA membership has grown by more than two-thirds since the project was announced.
The March go-live caps more than $20 million in investment and 12,000 hours of delivery group meetings, and has drawn endorsement from the Media Federation of Australia and the Australian Association of National Advertisers.
For planners, the practical shift is immediate.
Half of OOH assets were previously unmeasured, meaning regional inventory, place-based environments like gyms and office towers, and airport media were effectively invisible to standard planning tools.
Different environments also signal different audience mindsets, opening up new strategic thinking about how campaigns are built and sequenced.
The system also replaces average weeks with actual weeks, incorporating school holidays, public holidays and seasonal variation, giving buyers a more accurate picture of who they are reaching and when.
The change is structural, McIntyre said, not cosmetic.
"There are 29 key differences between the two systems," she said.
"Most importantly, the methodology is fundamentally different. Out-of-home campaigns haven't changed, but how we measure them has fundamentally changed."
The original MOVE is credited with growing OOH revenue to close to $1 billion by 2019 from $474 million at launch.
The OMA expects the new system to accelerate regional investment, test emerging formats and embed OOH deeper into cross-media plans.
"MOVE is a powerful example of what our industry can achieve when it comes together," McIntyre said.
"Most importantly, we know it will lead to further growth."
The closest international comparison is Route in the UK, which measures roadside and transit. MOVE covers roadside, transit, retail, regional and place-based inventory in one system.
The rebuild has been years in the making.
Tracking for the 5,000-person mobility panel began before COVID, stalled when movement patterns collapsed and missed a 2023 target.
MOVE was previewed at the OMA conference in May 2025, though agencies expecting a live platform were given a planning-access date instead.
A synthetic population of two million Australians sits at the system's core, built from a mobility study tracking 5,000 people.
Participants underwent 492 acceptance tests, logging every trip, destination and purpose.
"If I asked you how many times you go to the gym each week, most people would say five times," McIntyre said.
"Whereas the acceptance test was asking every single place you went, every step you took, what you were doing and why you were doing it. That's why the data is so granular."
The system produces 400 million rows of data across 180 demographic segments and 57 trip-purpose categories, including more than 12 for shopping centre visits.
It measures more than 150,000 sites, seven million road links, one million points of interest and close to 90,000 public transport stops, with hourly data across the year.
MOVE replaces the previous Opportunity to See model, where proximity implied exposure.
The new framework layers three metrics: Realistic Opportunity to See, which adjusts for sign size, illumination and visibility; Visibly Adjusted Contact, which applies eye-tracking and directional movement data and the Neuro Impact Factor, which quantifies return from combining formats at more than 27%, according to OMA data.
Regional inventory, 48,000 signs, nearly a third of national supply, is now measured on the same basis as metro markets across 21 reporting areas.
Place-based media in cafes, gyms and office buildings is folded into the same currency as roadside and transit across 1,300 indoor locations.
Airport data captures post-security movement, lounge dwell time and splits between business and leisure travellers.
"If I think about the 7,842 panels on buses that are now being measured regionally, that's a tremendous presence we're going to have across Australia," McIntyre said.
OMA data puts weekly OOH audience at 97% of Australians aged 14 and above, 22 million people and 4.9 billion impressions, based on four out of five leaving home each day.
"For many social media channels, it takes a month to get half of that audience," McIntyre said.
"If you think about something like TikTok making $8 billion a year, and it takes a month to reach 30% of Australians, we are the strongest and fastest-reaching medium, delivering scale at pace."
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.