I always thought data was boring and unintriguing, just numbers on a screen that didn’t really mean anything to me or the normal world. However, after spending a week at Route for my work experience, my perspective has completely changed on data and the opportunities in this little corner of the working world.
On Monday, I learnt about data visualisation and how to use Tableau. I worked on making dashboards on the OOH advertisements in the borough of Lewisham. I developed my skills on Tableau by adding catchment areas, filters and other graphs to represent this data set.
On Tuesday, I met with Global to learn about their role in OOH advertisement and how they used different tools to interpret the data and target certain groups of people. One thing I learnt about the role of Route Data is how much of an importance they hold in OOH advertisement and how their work ties in with Global and other major media companies. How media companies use Route’s data to help advertisers place ads in certain places depending on the content and target audience. This was followed with a delicious lunch (a common theme in the week) and I was back in the office to learn about data engineering. My task was to clean up and modify a spreadsheet full of messed up, irrelevant data that was unusable, I noted down my process and thinking as I went along, cleaning up dates, spelling and in some cases, deleting columns! From this, I learnt about the processes of data engineering and the attention to detail and patience that you need for this job.
On Wednesday, I went to Talon’s office in the morning to learn about how they use eye tracking to develop heat maps for posters. This is used to optimise the creative for the poster and they give feedback to companies on how they could make their campaigns even better. They talked to me about why they do this and when in the campaign, I flagged some posters as well and looked at their eye tracking processes. Afterwards, I met up with Anna Sampson, a freelance consultant, to go on a walk and have an opportunity to talk about being a woman in business. I learnt so much from this as I had the opportunity to ask questions about how she was able to create her own business, what she studied and what she’s learnt from this experience. I was able to think about what I may want to do in the future and how I would get there. Afterwards, I was taken out to lunch again with Rebecca Watson from the IPA to talk about school, careers and opportunities. She also talked to me about the role of the IPA and the use of Touchpoints. The IPA is an institute that supports major advertising professionals and Touchpoints are where the consumer and brand/company interact. I learnt that the IPA supports the media industry by providing this data to help plan more effective campaigns.
On Thursday, I worked on my dashboards and data cleaning projects until it was time to sit in on an econometrics workshop (run by Anna Sampson) in order to talk through how to best represent OOH advertising. I learnt how an in-person meeting works and I gained experience in how to listen and share opinions in a professional setting. Afterwards, I went out to an Italian restaurant for lunch and came back to complete my tasks.
Looking back on my week at Route, I’ve learnt so much about the media industry and advertising. I never realised how much of it was talking to people, creating strategies and communicating with consumers. From working with Route data and Touchpoints to learning about econometrics and data visualisation and engineering, I’ve gained practical knowledge on subjects that will help me with my general understanding of the industry. However, it wasn’t only technical knowledge that I have gained during this week, throughout work experience, I have gained confidence in meeting new people, I’ve developed my skills in being able to talk to new people and in asking questions. I am so grateful for everyone at Route who helped me with this experience, I am thankful to those who gave their time to teach me about what they do every day and were patient with me and all my questions.
This week has been an unimaginable experience and who knows, maybe I’ll be working in advertising strategies one day too!
by Mabel Mackay
Check out Mabel's Tableau dashboards below! Data is from R53 (Q4 2024) and includes audience data from a week in March with a spot/break schedule of 10 seconds to 50 seconds.
