Out-of-Home Advertising Measurement in Canada

Who measures out-of-home advertising in Canada?

COMMB — the Canadian Out-of-Home Marketing and Measurement Bureau. It is the national not-for-profit joint industry committee, formed in 2018 by merging COMB and OMAC, and it is the measurement authority for the medium here.

Its membership spans advertisers, agencies, programmatic platforms and more than forty OOH companies. Methodology decisions sit with a research committee of buy-side and sell-side experts that votes on statistical soundness, deliberately outside the board.

That governance structure is why COMMB numbers carry weight in a negotiation in a way a media owner's own figures do not.

How does COMMB actually calculate an OOH audience?

By modelling who passes a specific face, whether they could see it, and who they are. It is more granular than most advertisers realise.

COMMB measurement methodology documentation.

Three details matter for planning. Digital impressions account for speed, visibility and dwell time at screen and ad-play level, not just traffic past the site. Output is available across 192 hourly dayparts and eight day-types. And each individual face has a custom distance visibility zone set for it, which handles sight-line obstruction rather than assuming every board is equally visible.

Home neighbourhood is derived from a device's persistently resting overnight location, then cross-referenced to postal-code demographics. That is how a Canadian OOH plan can be built against an audience definition rather than against traffic counts.

What is ROADMAP and why does it matter?

COMMB's reach and frequency tool, live since May 2025. It represents five years of work and over $4 million of member investment, and it is what finally lets Canadian OOH be planned on the same terms as broadcast.

It provides reach and frequency down to the individual asset — by face for classic inventory, and at ad-play level for digital — with spill reporting for any market representing 1% or more of audience. Roadside audience measurement was added in November 2025, and quintile analysis toggles in December 2025.

The commercial significance is that OOH can now enter a media mix model on comparable terms. COMMB built the tool explicitly so OOH could be “measured alongside other media types” and integrated into mix modelling.

COMMB also publishes cross-media reach data worth having in a plan: OOH combined with TV reaches 88.5%, with online 87.3%, with social 87.1%. Adding OOH lifts overall campaign reach by around 23%.

How is mall and place-based inventory measured?

Through computer vision, and Canada was first in the world to do it at JIC level.

COMMB announced its first mall measurement methodology on 16 September 2024, built on Quividi's AI computer-vision audience measurement platform. It made COMMB the first out-of-home joint industry committee globally to integrate Quividi data into its standards. Cineplex Media's mall network was the first accredited under it.

COMMB has since extended into audio out-of-home measurement as well, and launched a free Media Insights Platform in July 2026.

For an advertiser the practical upshot is that place-based inventory in Canada is now measured rather than estimated, which changes how confidently it can be compared against roadside on a plan.

What can Canadian OOH measurement not tell you?

Several things, and knowing them is what separates a defensible post-campaign report from a hopeful one.

• An impression is an opportunity to see, not a proven view. COMMB models visibility carefully — speed, dwell, sight lines — but it is still modelled exposure, not observed attention.
• Market-level data is not campaign-level truth. ROADMAP gives reach and frequency for the assets you bought. It does not tell you what any individual actually did next.
• Attribution requires a separate tool. COMMB does not do footfall or conversion attribution. That comes from third parties — Reveal Mobile brought brand lift and footfall attribution to Canada on 21 January 2025, and Broadsign offers brand lift, in-store and online lift studies through named data partners.
• Smaller markets are thinner. Pedestrian measurement covers the top 45 markets. Below that, data is more limited.
• Public market-level revenue and audience breakdowns are not published. ROADMAP is login-gated to members, so an advertiser cannot independently verify a city-level claim without agency access.

When a method cannot distinguish between two explanations for a result, we say that in the report rather than choosing the one that suits the campaign.