Trailer tracking helps count eyeballs

The new mantra to trucking is near-real-time GPS-based trailer tracking has the potential to squeeze out operational inefficiencies, recover a lost trailer and/or derail a terrorist plot. But what isn’t common knowledge is the same technology can initiate a revolution in fleet graphics.

That’s what outdoor advertising firm Market Information Services of America, Inc. (MISA) is betting on, upon implementing a unique proposition with Terion, Inc. The two companies have announced the integration of Terion’s FleetView 3 trailer tracking system with MISA’s marketing database.

Under this collaboration, the FleetView 3 system will transmit the actual route a trailer moves to MISA daily. MISA then will determine the “number of eyeballs” on the trailer as well as its proximity to point-of-sale outlets, explained a Terion representative. The important distinction is that trailer tracking enables MISA to gauge the marketing value of a trailer based on its actual route—not planned ones.

And this arms the marketing firm with audience metrics data—which drive ad-pricing information—that has previously been either unavailable or cost-prohibitive to obtain. The Terion-MISA partnership “combines the visceral quality people appreciate in this medium with an ironclad high-tech solution for media metrics,” Charley Patterson, MISA vp of new business development told FleetOwner.

“Proprietary truck media creates opportunities for indirect revenue for manufacturers and incremental revenue for retailers with logistics capabilities,” stated Tom Harrison, MISA vp of proprietary media management.

Patterson told FleetOwner that he sees three segments of the trucking industry as having the greatest value to this medium: retail private fleets, dedicated fleets for manufacturers and service fleets.

On the retail side, for example, a grocery store trailer has a high advertising value because of their proximity to the store itself. Dedicated fleets have the opportunity to market itheir manufacturing clients’ product to provide a value-added service. Trucks in service fleets, for example in the package delivery industry, could become profit centers by providing a physical marketing presence to online retailers that lack a “brick-and-mortar presence,” Patterson said.

For more information, go to www.terion.com or www.misa.com.