Astral Out-of-Home Launches MARK

Gail Chiasson, North American Editor

Montreal-based Astral Out-of-Home, one of Canada’s leading out-of-home advertising companies and a subsidiary of Astral Media Inc. has launched MARK, its exclusive geo-marketing intelligence service.

Available to advertisers and agencies for both Astral’s traditional and digital properties, MARK provides a fresh, modern look at cities and the lifestyle and consumer habits of those who live or spend time in them to create and deliver effective, targeted advertising campaigns.

“MARK was developed by Astral’s research department who compiled the detailed information from a variety of sources including Statistics Canada and many other sources,” says Philippe René, senior director, research, at Astral Out-of-Home.

Through its observations and analyses, MARK pinpoints the urban movement of consumers and offers advertisers customized OOH solutions to optimize advertising messages based on urban mobility. It relies on the most robust statistical data in the country relating to consumer habits and interest group movement towards their various lifestyle activities.

“It allows us to overlay information and dig really deep to be able to tell the advertiser or agency exactly, for example, which people drink imported beer according to where they live and move so that they can be specifically targeted without the advertiser having to buy our screens or other OOH products across the entire city to reach them,” says René

“More than ever, consumers behave like real urban nomads. There are 20% more of them on roads than 10 years ago, spending 35 minutes more per week just traveling between home and work. This increased mobility leverages out-of-home advertising, which is achieving constant audience growth.

“We analyze over 5,000 marketing variables in order to accurately map out consumer movement in Canada’s largest markets. We can combine this expertise with our media creativity to considerably increase the impact of advertising campaigns by focusing distribution on select advertising faces where the targeted clientele live, work, shop, and play.”

Astral has close to 8,000 strategically-placed advertising faces in key markets in Québec, Ontario, and British Columbia. It charges a small premium for the use of MARK.


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