Advertising on conveyor belts at supermarket checkouts is the latest point-of-sale advertising to be tested here.

Next month Dublin company POP Media, which has the point-of-sale advertising contract for Dunnes, Superquinn and Tesco, will test the effectiveness of conveyer-belt advertising on shoppers in Dunnes Stores in Cornelscourt, Dublin.

Advertisements for the Laser card brand and for Esat top-up cards will be the first campaigns. "Point-of-sale is a growing media," says Mr Malachy Sheridan, MD at POP Media, a specialist media company he established two years ago. "Last year, for example, Procter & Gamble diverted 15 per cent of its above-the-line spend into ambient media and it's very much an international trend."

Ambient media includes point-of-sale advertising and other non-traditional forms of advertising which aim to catch the target audience's attention by matching the location and type of ad with consumers' lifestyles.

At the end of July, Ryanair will introduce advertising strips inside its planes with Eircom being the first advertiser to buy space to advertise low-cost international phone calls.

Another of POP's products, supermarket trolley advertising, was tested here last year and the first research using a Kellogg's campaign for its new Fruit Winder snack product has just been conducted.

Advertisements were placed on trolleys in eight Superquinn branches and not in eight others. By the end of the four-week campaign the results showed an 18 per cent uplift in sales in the stores with the advertising as opposed to 3 per cent in those without.

"We would already use trolley advertising in the UK," says Kellogg's brand manager Ms Jennifer Reilly, "but when we are using a new media and advertising a new product in any market, we would always test the results". The results came from the supermarket's own electronic point-of-sale system which is linked to the bar codes on each product and can tell exactly what products were sold. A four-week trolley campaign in 135 supermarkets costs £29,000 (#36,822).

Point-of-sale is very much a support media and Kelloggs used it that way. Winders were launched in the UK and Ireland simultaneously and it is the brand's first non-cereal product.

"It was launched with a fun television commercial," says Ms Reilly. "What we were trying to do on the trolleys was stress that Winders are made from 50 per cent fruit juice and we feel that that is working."

Point-of-sale or other ambient media is likely to be a growing feature of the weekly shop. Some 89 per cent of families shop in supermarkets, the average shopping time is just over an hour and four times per month is the average frequency.

For marketing people, it is a captive and, thanks to barcode scanners, a measurable audience. For the supermarket chains, it is also an important revenue stream.

"Profits on selling food and beverages are getting tighter all the time," says Mr Sheridan. "Look at the increasing number of poster sites in supermarket carparks, they are all becoming increasingly important sources of revenue."

"We won't know whether Irish consumers will take to conveyor belt advertising until we see the research at the end of the test run in Cornelscourt, but we will be able to measure it accurately by counting how many people used their Laser card to pay or how many bought telephone cards."

bharrison@irish-times.ie