What is the definition of a TV audience impact?

An impacts is:

1. One person
2. Seeing one ad
3. At one time

Example:

If 5 million people watch an ad in the centre break of a TV programme on Thursday evening at 7.30 pm that is 5m impacts.

If the exactly same 5m people watch another ad at 8pm, that is another 5m impacts.

Across the two ads, 10m impacts have been delivered for the client – but remember, it doesn’t mean 10m new people saw the break. In this example, 5m people saw the ad twice.

Are there different types of impact?

Yes, impacts can be counted by different demographic groups. So an ad might deliver:

• 5m Adult impacts
• 2m ABC1 Adult impacts (i.e. 2m of the 5m Adults were ABC1 Adults)
• 1m ABC1 55+ Adult impacts (1m of the 5m Adults were ABC1 Adults who were aged 55+)

Why are impacts important?

TV is traded on cost per thousand audience rates. So if you have a budget of £500k and you are buying CPT (Adults) is £5, then the number of impacts you will be able to buy (using a 30 second ad) will be

(£500,000 / 5) x 1000 = 100 million impacts

We multiply by 1,000 because your TV buying rate is a cost per thousand impacts.

You can learn how impacts are measured as TVRs here

The post What is a TV Audience Impact? first appeared on Marketing IQ.

Background

Although TV attribution is growing in popularity, it is not new. Direct response advertisers have been using simple ‘spot matching’ routines for around 20 years. These spot matching routines typically used a 5-10 minute window or ‘response curve’ which followed a TV spot transmission to match the spike of phone traffic that followed a spot transmission back to that spot. As phone response was usually received on one unique number used for each TV campaign it was a relatively simple task to match that single file of time stamped response data to a spot transmission schedule.

Using attribution to understand how TV drives web traffic

Today, as more and more brands invest in TV advertising to drive web traffic, the focus is on using attribution models to explain how TV spots drive web traffic. However, this is a much more complex area than analysing phone response.

The main challenge is that all brands receive web traffic from a wide variety of sources, 24 hours a day, seven days a week and when paid media advertising is either running or not running. Just a quick look at a Google Analytics report will show you how many sources drive your web traffic:

• Organic search
• Paid search
• Direct visits
• Referrals
• Affiliates
• Display campaigns
• Paid media campaigns
• Revisits

Which traffic do we analyse?

Let’s look at what TV viewers do when they see an ad. They are likely to do one of three things:

1. Enter the brand address directly into their browsers or
2. Click on a paid search (PPC) link or
3. Click on the top organic link.

Reflecting these behaviours, most brands look at:

1. New user traffic through direct browser entries
2. New user traffic through paid search
3. New user traffic through organic search

You will notice that there is a focus on new users. Clearly, new users are of more  interest to brands targeting new customers.

Identifying the baseline web traffic

Identifying the base is complex. This is because a campaign can have a number of baselines depending on the time sample you are looking at. Each hour of the day may have a given level of “natural” traffic. Each day of the week may also have a given level of traffic (this is often the case) and weeks and months may have repeating patterns. Over and above this the brand may have a long-term upward trend in web traffic where each week increases slightly on the previous week. All this means that applying the same baseline to all your analyses will make your results flawed.

The answer to this problem is to use a model which incorporates different baselines based on different times of day, days of week etc.

How does the TV spot matching algorithm work?

Algorithms are mathematical equations that allow a number of variables to be considered simultaneously. So, for TV attribution we need an algorithm that considers the following:

1. The seasonal base
2. The trend
3. The weekly base
4. The day of week base
5. The hour of day base
6. The time of the spot transmission
7. The volume of audience delivered in the spot transmission
8. The time the response is received
9. The way the response distributes over the time period following the spot transmission (the curve)

With this algorithm in place it is possible to calculate a probability that a new web visit that occurred within say 7 minutes of spot transmission was caused by that spot transmission. This process is then repeated across all the spots in the campaign until a probability for all new traffic response to be driven by the TV activity has been calculated.

What type of reporting is available through TV attribution?

Because we have the attributes of the spot (TV station, date, day of week, time of day, type of break, type of creative etc) we can report all these metrics on an aggregated basis. So, for example, we can say Fridays are the most responsive on a % response rate basis, or the most efficient on a £ CPA basis. We can also say which channels and time of day or most responsive.  With this insight we are able to optimise the TV buy to focus budget into the station, days of week and times of day that will deliver the highest ROI.

You can read more about optimising DRTV campaigns here

The post What is TV attribution modelling? first appeared on Marketing IQ.

To illustrate some of the key differences here is a paid media summary in the context of TV:

Objectives:

• Brand advertising tends to seek a change in attitudes towards a brand and deliver uplifts in “lower funnel” sales channels such a display, search and social media
• Direct response advertising tends to seek an immediate behavioural response – the generation of immediate clicks, leads, sales or donations.

Creative strategy:

• Brand advertising tends to position products and services relative to each other in their category and differentiate them using emotional involvement and engagement.
• Direct response tends to persuade consumers to buy immediately using rational messaging.

Here’s a brand advertising TV creative example: Brand advertising building emotional connections – Moneysupermarket

You can see how the essence of the Moneysupermarket ad is entertainment – it uses striking imagery to make an impression on you, build an emotional connection and increase brand trust. The aim is to increase your emotional preference for the brand and reduce your reliance on the functional benefits of the product. That way, when it comes to conversion you will opt to buy from a brand you’ve heard of, feel connected to and trust – even if the pricing or functional benefits are not necessarily the best in the market. In the case of Moneysupemarket, the “do you feel epic?” line invites consumers to be part of a movement.

Here’s a direct response TV (DRTV) advertising example: Direct response advertising is looking for an immediate behavioural response – clicks, quotes, calls, leads or sales

Here you can see how DRTV aims to deliver short-term behavioural change – i.e. web visit response – by covering a lot of selling points in a very short period of time. There is no attempt to gain an emotional connection through entertainment. Quite the opposite – here the intention is to persuade consumers using rational argument.

Ad Timelengths:

• Brand advertising can work on lower timelength edits – typically these are 30 seconds or less – 20s or 10s.
• Direct response advertising tends to require longer timelengths to allow the persuasive arguments to be built and the call to action delivered.

Media Frequency:

• Brand advertising requires both reach and controlled repetition to drive memory. Typically this might be 80% reach at 5-8 OTS  –  that requires between 400 and 640 TVRs.
• Direct response advertising aims to maximise reach at lower levels of frequency so TVR weights can be mush lighter. Given that in the UK, 10 adult TVRs equates to 5m impacts, this weight is adequate to test the responsiveness of an ad.

Media Dayparts and Programme Type:

• Brand advertising requires access to working target audiences which means advertising when they are available to view –  typically this is when they get home from work post 5.30pm – otherwise known as peak. Tends to require high quality programme content environments to maximise chances of engagement with advertising.
• Direct response advertising tends to work best in low interest programme environments and in dayparts where airtime is less demanded and therefore less expensive  – this tends to push DRTV advertising into off peak airtime.

Media Weight:

• Brand advertising tends to require heavier campaign weights. This is because of the requirement to build reach and frequency. There is also strong evidence that share of voice can correlate positively with share of market outcomes
• Direct response aims to maximise reach on the basis that consumers who do not respond on the first or second exposure are unlikely to respond to subsequent exposures in the short-term.

Campaign Evaluation:

• Brand evaluation is based on its objectives – typically these are awareness and consideration shifts and uplift effects on other media channels such as display, search and social.
• Direct response advertising tends to be evaluated based upon immediate response metrics,. clicks, calls, leads, sales, subscriptions and donations
• You can read more about evaluation here

The post How is brand advertising different to direct response advertising? first appeared on Marketing IQ.

How TVRs build campaign reach

Let’s assume you buy 100 TVRs in a given region. We know from our last post on TVRs that 100 TVRs is an amount of audience that is the equivalent of 100% of our target audience base.  But here’s the first important lesson in how TVRs build reach and frequency. 100 TVRs will not deliver 100% reach of that base.  In fact 100 TVRs will probably build around 50-60% reach depending on how those TVRs are distributed in the plan. So what is delivered by the TVRs that don’t deliver reach? Well, they deliver frequency.

How TVRs build campaign frequency

In the early stages of campaign, most people will see the ad only once. But some will see it twice and some may see it three times. Let’s say, for example, that 50% see it once, 20% see it twice and 15% see it three times 10% four times and 5% five times. These percentage total 100 and this is effectively how your 100 TVRs are distributed. This is called frequency distribution.

How to estimate frequency from TVRs and reach

There is a simple formula for estimating how TVRs deliver both reach and frequency.  Let’s continue to assume you have 100 TVRs. Frequency (sometimes called average opportunity to see or OTS) is calculated by dividing your campaign reach into your campaign TVRs. So, if you have 100 TVRs and your campaign delivers 50% reach then your average OTS is 100/50 = 2.

How many TVRs does my campaign need to be effective?

This depends upon whether or not you adopt the view that reach is more important than frequency.  Modern “recency” planning advocates (John Philip Jones, Erwin Ephron, Byron Sharp) argue that each point of reach will deliver more sales response than additional points of frequency (i.e. the percentage of people seeing the ad twice, three times etc). So they advocate building maximum reach on a weekly or a monthly level, but not building frequency. To achieve this objective media planners will seek between 100 and 150 TVRs per week and often plan the delivery of these TVRs in a week on, week off “drip” pattern. This type of campaign plan tends to suit campaigns that are designed to regularly remind consumers about a product they are already aware of.

More traditional media planning approaches (Krugman for example) suggest a minimum frequency of 5 OTS before a message begins to resonate with a prospect.  Our calculation tells us that if we want to achieve 80% reach at 5 OTS we will need 80×5 = 400 TVRs. Targeting an average of 7 OTS would require 560 TVRs. You can see why a launch campaign would typically be around 600 TVRs.

More advanced forms of planning use statistical modelling to estimate the sales response curve to advertising. These models show how budget and TVRs drive sales response (could be retail or online sales) on a weekly basis and forecast when spend levels will hit diminishing returns. For more on this please see these pages

Thanks to Ivan Clark for comments.

The post How do TVRs build media reach and frequency? first appeared on Marketing IQ.

Set 1 – DRTV Phone Response Rates (high to low range as a percentage of total impacts)

• DRTV Type 1 – Hard Hitters – these DRTV hard hitters, with no-nonsense creative, usually on a 60 second time length can achieve between 1% and 0.05%. But please note, exceeding 0.05% is very rare in DRTV. It’s usually delivered through a combination of an extremely powerful ad, a very strong product, a great offer transmitted on a low level but highly responsive audience. It is very difficult to exceed 0.05% at scale.
• DRTV Type 2 – Lead Generators – these DRTV ads are usually seeking subscription trials, leads, quotes etc and run on time lengths between 30 seconds and 60 seconds.  Response rates tend to be around 0.05% and 0.005%.
• DRTV Type 3 – Brand Response – these ‘BRTV’ soft sellers produce lower responses generally in the range of 0.005% to 0.0005%

Set 2 – DRTV Web Response Rates (high-low range as a percentage of total impacts)

• DRTV Type 1 – Hard Hitters –  these are high response rate ads will generate 2-3 times their phone response equivalents so around  2% and 0.1%
• DRTV Type 2 – Lead Generators – web response rates to these tend to generate around 0.5% and 0.05%.
• DRTV Type 3 – Brand Response – these BRTV ‘soft sellers’ produce lower responses generally in the range of 0.05% to 0.005%

Find our more information about our DRTV Media Planning, Buying and Evaluation course please follow this link

The post DRTV Response Rates first appeared on Marketing IQ.

1. Remember all DRTV begins with the offer. Whilst issues around DRTV performance are often seen as “creative” or “media” we need to remember that the proposition to consumers is key to DRTV success. If you are offering free Ferraris you will not need to think in terms of creative or media optimisation. The offer will work. Equally, if you are offering a poorly differentiated product or service, you will find it difficult to sell. Your problems will be exacerbated further if you are in a mature market packed with established offers.  So ask yourself the “so-what” question against every line of copy. If you wouldn’t buy it, no-one else will.
2. Develop compelling DRTV creative. DRTV seeks behavioural change, and consumers need to be given good reasons to stop what they’re doing and do something else. You need to talk in terms of meaningful benefits. There are certain category rules that are helpful. If you’re selling a financial product don’t use jokes. For most people, talking about their hard-earned money is not a funny business. Concentrate on explaining why the product is different, what it offers that is new and why your target audience should find out more.
3. Be careful with emotional sales messages. Most mainstream advertising seeks to build emotional connections between people and brands. For many brands this is the right approach, but if you want to sell off the screen, stick to promoting the benefits that make you different and giving good reasons to buy.
4. Make sure the creative identifies your target audience. Everyone watches broadcast media. The trick to making DRTV work is to create a sense of identification between you and your target audience. Show people and situations that your target audience will identify with. Create the impression that your target audience belongs in the ad.
5. Understand the economics of broadcast media. TV companies use every possible device to maximise the financial yield on the audience they are selling. Yield is the revenue generated by advertising over the cost of attracting that audience i.e. producing or buying the programming.  High quality peak programming is expensive to produce or buy. More people are at home available to view during peak viewing times (5pm to 11pm) so audiences are higher. So TV companies put their highest cost, highest quality programming into the times of day when most people are available to view.  Moreover, ad agencies want high reach, so there is high demand for high quality, high audience programming. All this makes peak airtime expensive both in terms of unit cost and capital cost. The premiums embedded in peak mean it sells at rates that rarely work for DRTV advertisers. But off-peak airtime is an entirely different matter….
6. Unlock the benefits of off-peak airtime. Everybody watches off-peak TV; young, middle-age, old, affluent, less well off, single, married, students, working people and those who’re retired. People take holidays and have days off. But most importantly, the homemaker watches daytime TV and the homemaker is often the person who researches and makes financial plans.  Daytime can be ideal for reaching family decision makers. Daytime can be ideal for reaching students and it can be ideal for reaching affluent grey markets. Off-peak is the place to test your product in DRTV.
7. Test. When you construct a test think about the questions you want to answer. You could test creative A versus creative B.  You could test phone versus SMS or web response. You could test a longer ad versus a shorter ad. And of course you need to test channels and stations. You can construct your test in time blocks – Station 1 with creative A in week 1, station 1 with creative B in week 2,  station 2 with creative A in week 3 and station 2 with creative B in week 4. This way you can analyse the incremental response in each week an look at its cost and conversion characteristics. When you have analysed your results you can “roll out” into the optimal mix of creative and media options.
8. Measure and learn. DRTV is direct response marketing and the lifeblood of direct response is quantified planning and control. Using BARB data it is possible to match minute by minute audience data with your minute by minute click traffic. This allows advertisers to build a response database which matches TV audience with web response. Each spot can be defined by a number of planning variables that can be controlled: day of week, time of day, channel, proximity to previous spot, length of spot and creative execution. All these factors can be combined and used to optimise future DRTV media buys.

Find our more information about our DRTV Media Planning, Buying and Evaluation course please follow this link

The post How to get the best from DRTV first appeared on Marketing IQ.