Media Planning - Marketing IQ

Why we must learn to build brands in digital media

Simon Foster — Sat, 15 Apr 2023 08:44:47 +0000

In this article, written for the mSix’s website, I highlight how digital media has passed the tipping point and why marketers must evolve beyond the simplistic ‘long and short duopoly’ and use digital media to build brand fame as well as driving performance.

The time is right to challenge and develop the original works of Binet and Field. ‘Marketing in the Era of Accountability’ [1] and ‘The Long and the Short of It’ [2] are now more than a decade old. This work reflected the mesia landscape as it as then and put TV at the heart of brand building, but since then the media consumption landscape has changed – and it has changed dramatically.

In 2013, and taking the US as an example, TV, radio, and print dominated with 53% of media consumption minutes. Within this, TV delivered 4:30 minutes per day (38%). At the same time, digital channels accounted for the 4:50 mins (40%). But by 2022, US TV, radio, and print consumption had fallen to 34% and US mobile and desktop had grown to around 62% of consumption (although total media consumption minutes have increased by around 15%, likely due to mobile ubiquity) [3]. Most significantly, US mobile consumption has almost doubled from around two hours per day to over four. Patterns for the UK are broadly similar, with 2:26 mins on TV in 2012 failing to 1:42 in 2022 and 24:00 mins per day in Social growing to 1:17 mins by 2022 [4].

Against these tectonic shifts, Binet and Field’s 2013 argument that TV is the prerequisite brand-building channel must be challenged and, as a consequence, we need to ask, how do we build brands in digital media?

Traditionally, TV has been the place where ‘System 1’ messaging has been delivered through emotional connections, fame and reach. System 1 messaging is a core ingredient of fame building. This type of communication aims for high mental availability and fast effortless decision making through ubiquity – which is essentially, fame. At the core of this thinking is reach – reaching as many of your potential audience as possible. Put in a slightly different way by the late Jeremy Bullmore, “if you want to be as famous as BMW, it’s no use being known only by the tiny percentage of the population who can afford to buy your car today”.

Until recently, digital channels have been used primarily to target these “tiny percentages” with System 2 “buy now” messaging. But this approach severely undervalues the reach potential of digital channels. According to IPA Touchpoints the post lockdown high reach digital media channels are social media and functional internet (commercially funded websites which are not for media, social media or communication e.g. search, shopping, researching). These channels can deliver 70% to 80% weekly all-adult reach, putting them on a par with commercial TV and way ahead of commercial radio, magazines, newsbrands and cinema.

Of course all this means moving your guardrail KPIs from performance to brand metrics like attitudinal shifts, recall, preference, purchase intent, and incremental brand growth. Measurement and monitoring techniques need to shift uplift experiments, MMM and tracking studies.

The shifts in focus that are required to build brands in digital are summarised in the checklist below:

Targeting: Move from tight signals targeting to brand audience reach
Mental message processing: Move from System 2 (aim to close the sale) to System 1 (aim to change instincts)
Messaging: Move from rational to emotional engagement
Mental availability: Move from Low to High
Optimisation: Move from short term CPA to longer term attitudinal metrics like consideration and purchase intent
Evaluation metrics: Move from performance metrics to a set of agreed attitudinal metrics
Evaluation cadence: Move from short term to medium term

By changing the way we plan, activate, measure and benchmark digital channels we unlock their ever-expanding potential to build and reinforce brand attributes and, in doing so, prove it’s now time to move beyond the long and short of it.

References

Binet and Field, ‘Marketing in the Era of Accountability’ IPA 2007
Binet and Field, ‘The Long and the Short of it: Balancing Short and Long-Term Marketing Strategies’, IPA 2013
‘Average time spend with media in the US’, eMarketer April 2016 and April 2022
IPA Touchpoints 2023
IPA ‘Making Sense: the Commercial Media Landscape’ 2022

The post Why we must learn to build brands in digital media first appeared on Marketing IQ.

Towards Attention Metrics by Media Channel

Simon Foster — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 17:28:39 +0000

Research into attention to advertising is going to drive a rethink in how we view media channels

Attention metrics concern the degree of attention consumers give to different advertising media channels. This is important if we accept that higher attention is likely to lead to higher cognition and memory retention. The value of attention isn’t universally agreed and the way attention converts to memory is a complex area [1]. If you take the view that advertising is consumed on a subliminal level, then the case for attention is possibly diminished. But if you believe that when information receives less attention, memory encoding decreases [2] then obviously attention is important. Either way, attention metrics are now firmly in the advertising and media planning Zeitgeist [3, 4] and there is no doubt that these metrics are going to be a big feature of media research, strategy and planning into 2023 and beyond.

So, how do we address the issue of attention by media channel?

Lumen Research [5] have undertaken a study to estimate average dwell time as a proxy for attention to a range of channels. Lumen’s findings are outlined below:

The formula being used by Lumen is % view x av. eyes-on dwell time x 1000 impressions. But in my view this formula could benefit from consideration of size of screen, distance from screen and clutter.

Let’s develop this further by estimating screen size and viewing distance ratio for each channel.

I have estimated screen sizes in feet so for a example, an average cinema screen is about 65 feet, an average TV screen about 3.5 feet (42″, diagonal) and the average PC or tablet size 1.2 feet (15″ diagonal). Mobile phone sizes are estimated at 3″ across. I have also added a metric for distance. Distances are also in feet with average distances from cinema seat at 50 feet, TV and BVOD at 10 feet, PC or Tablet at 1.25 feet and Mobile devices at 1 foot from the viewer. I have not included OOH as distances and screen sizes vary significantly – think tube cross track 6 sheet vs roadside 48 sheet. I have also excluded radio as size and distance metrics are not relevant. To create the size / distance ratio, size is divided by distance.

Adding clutter metrics to attention metrics

To add clutter metrics, I have used a scale of 1-5 where 1 is low clutter and 5 is high. Cinema, TV, VOD and BVOD advertising messages tend to be delivered sequentially so there is no surrounding clutter from a visual perspective. PC and mobile display advertising is often delivered in parallel and so tends to attract higher clutter. Mobile can have higher clutter and in some cases we see multiple ads, underlays and overlays being observed in the same content feeds – this can be seen in the example below [6], with two ads running simultaneously in a recipe page:

Combining these, we derive the the following size/ distance ratios and derive a clutter-weighted ratio by multiplying the size distance ratio by the clutter weighting metric (Ratio incl Clutter).

The Ratio including the clutter weighting can be graphed as below:

Cinema, given its dominant delivery scores highest, followed by full screen incline VOD, TV and BVOD within the range 1.30 to 0.35. Display PC activity ranges between 0.24 and 0.19. Mobile channels with their very small screen size and high clutter score in the 0.08 to 0.06 range. PC-based VOD scores highly when the screen size and closeness to screen are combined with the low clutter of an inline delivery.

Comments and adjustment suggestions welcome.

Interactions between attention and memory, Marvin M Chun and Nicholas B Turk-Browne, Science Direct 2007 https://ntblab.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Chun_CONB_2007.pdf
Memory and Attention Long, Kuhl, and Chun in Stevens’ Handbook of Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience (pp.1-37)
What are attention metrics and why are they crucial for digital advertising? Mateusz Jędrocha, The Drum, August 25, 2022 https://www.thedrum.com/profile/rtb-house/news/what-are-attention-metrics-and-why-are-they-crucial-for-digital-advertising
No Longer a Novelty, Attention Metrics are Now Fully Ingrained in Agencies’ Planning and Measurement, Tim Cross VideoWeek, 21 July, 2022https://videoweek.com/2022/07/21/no-longer-a-novelty-attention-metrics-are-now-fully-ingrained-in-agencies-planning-and-measurement/
Lumen Research, “Media Buying” https://lumen-research.com/media-buying/
Bread in four easy steps, BBC Good Food, https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/bread-four-easy-steps, retrieved 12 June 2024

The post Towards Attention Metrics by Media Channel first appeared on Marketing IQ.

What is Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM)?

Simon Foster — Sat, 20 Nov 2021 20:32:00 +0000

Marketing Mix Modelling or MMM is a regression-based approach to identifying the drivers of sales for a business or brand – making it a form of attribution. For many advertisers it is used to understand and optimise the effects of paid media in generating short and medium term sales outcomes. Unlike many other forms of attribution, MMM aims to measure the effects of both paid media and non-media sales drivers simultaneously. This is important because it is only by accounting for the role of the non-media drivers that can we make more accurate statements about the performance of the media channels themselves. Without this delineation, we risk misattributing a sales effect to media when it might have been caused by something else. This in turn can cause an over statement of media’s performance.

With MMM models built, we are able to run scenarios and forecast outcomes from different types of media activity. This enables advertisers to optimise their media investments to maximise sales returns from media or marketing budgets invested.

Why is it called Marketing Mix Modelling?

MMM derives its name from the traditional ‘marketing mix’. The name recognises that all the variables in the marketing mix have a role in generating sales. So, let’s remind ourselves of the traditional marketing mix – the so called 4 Ps – Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

Product: In MMM, we might attach some attributes to the product – fast, smooth, light, powerful, low CO2 etc. These might be significant drivers within the category.

Price: Price is always a key determinant in consumer behaviour. As a general rule, products priced competitively sell more, and products priced less competitively relative to a category or competitors sell less. If we are to avoid confusing price effects with media effects, we naturally have to isolate the effect of price and take it out of the effectiveness equation.

Place: i.e. Distribution variables, whether they’re online (like delivery times) or offline (like store opening times) distribution variables usually have an effect on sales. If more stores are open, more product tends to be sold. If delivery times are long, versus competitors, less product tends to be sold. If we are to avoid confusing distribution effects with media effects, we also have to isolate the effect of distribution and take it out of the effectiveness equation.

Promotion: This variable is the promotional or advertising media spend variable. It can include advertising in media channels like TV, online display, search, social, OOH, cinema and print media.

What does an MMM actually look like?

This is a question many clients want to ask. MMM is often presented as a complex black box, when in fact it is simply an equation that captures the impact of the different elements of the marketing mix outlined above. A Marketing Mix Model equation looks like this:

Sales = base (the levels of sales with no marketing) + (product attribute * a coefficient) + (price * a coefficient) + (distribution* a coefficient) + (promotion * a coefficient) + an error term.

Think of the coefficient is a statistically determined response rate which captures the rate at which sales are generated from changes in investments or activities in each of the Ps.

In statistics, the above might be written like this:

y = B0 + B1xX1 + B2xX2 + B3xX3 + error

How is MMM used to optimise paid media investments?

When we know the rate at which each “P” in our model generates sales, we can set values for each of the Ps excluding media advertising and then adjust the media advertising investment levels to see how those changes impact sales. This is a powerful tool in the marketer’s portfolio because it permits strong cases for media investment to be made. And that’s essential if to you want to maintain or secure increased budget from your CFO.

WE OFFER MARKETING AND MEDIA MIX MODELLING (MMM) TO OUR CLIENTS: FIND OUT MORE HERE

The post What is Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM)? first appeared on Marketing IQ.

Does excess share of voice (eSOV) guarantee brand sales growth?

Simon Foster — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 22:48:21 +0000

Excess share of voice (eSOV) is an important concept in marketing and media investment planning. The “excess” represents the degree to which your brand’s share of voice exceeds its share of market. Numerous studies have examined this relationship and consistently found that an excess share of voice over share of market is likely to result in brand sales growth.

ESOV was originally identified by John Philip Jones a hybrid marketing practitioner-academic who looked at a number of relationships between marketing and media investment and sales responses.

Here’s how eSOV works. If you have a 10% share of market (SOM=market share) and a 12% share of voice (SOV=share of category adspend) then your eSOV is +2. Jones was able to estimate the statistical relationship between eSOV and sales using panel data.

This relationship has been used by marketing planners for around twenty-five years. It’s a relatively easy concept to grasp, communicate and evidence with data. Most importantly, it’s a marketing argument that many boards are prepared to give a hearing and accept.

In recent years the marketing effectiveness specialists Les Binet and Peter Field have re-examined this relationship and added some interesting findings about how the eSOV concept is impacted by creativity.

But, as with many marketing concepts, there is some devil in the detail. There are five big points that are often overlooked but which should still be considered as part of the marketing planning and budgeting processes.

First – not all categories and advertisers behave in the same way when it comes to eSOV.
Second – SOV and SOM calculations often exclude companies than don’t advertise – think Google, Facebook or Tesla – brands that grew with little advertising support in their early years. They gained share of market through product advantage.
Third – eSOV tends to work much better when the excess share of voice is carrying award-winning creative work and vice versa.
Fourth – you need to think about the relationship between the required SOV and the impact on profits.
Fifth – Jones recommends using econometrics to fully understand how eSOV works as a component driver in your marketing mix. SOV or eSOV may not be the only explanatory variables in your mix. You will need to understand the contribution of all drivers to make valid statements about eSOV.

The post Does excess share of voice (eSOV) guarantee brand sales growth? first appeared on Marketing IQ.

Adstock and Diminishing Returns: non-linear advertising effects

Simon Foster — Sun, 07 Jun 2020 19:14:35 +0000

Adstock is an important concept in marketing effectiveness. It was first quantified by Simon Broadbent in the 1970s. Its value lies in helping make marketing and media mix models more accurate by recognising that advertising and media investments have non-linear “carryover” response effects.

These non-linear effects are normally grouped into two areas:

the delayed effect of advertising and
diminishing returns in advertising.

Let’s look at each one in turn:

1 – Adstock or Carryover

The first type of non-linear effect we see in media investment is the carryover effect. When we advertise, we know that the effects are not always seen immediately. This is because advertising, well good advertising, gets remembered and the memory effect on consumer behaviour may be felt some time after the ad is seen.

So, for example if an advertiser buys 100 GRPs in a week, the full effects of that investment are not confined to that week. What happens in practice is that the effect of that advertising tends to “carryover” into the next week and the week after that. How do we know this? We know because when we build models (e.g. MMM) to quantify response to media investment, they tend to be much more accurate when we carry-over the effect of advertising into the following weeks. We call this carryover effect Adstock.

You might ask “how much do we carry over?” The answer to this is found by testing different Adstock carry-over levels and analysing how they correlate with sales response over time. The most commonly used analogy here is borrowed from nuclear physics (don’t worry it’s not as complicated as it sounds). In nuclear physics radioactive substances have a half-life, that’s the time it takes for their radioactivity to decay by exactly half. Marketers borrow this thinking and use half-life decay rates to model lagged advertising effects. We refer to the length of time required for advertising Adstock to fall by half as the ‘half-life’.

So, as an example, if in week 1, 100 GRPs create 1000 sales, a one week half-life might see that effect carry-over to 500 sales in the second week, 250 sales in the third week and 125 sales in the fourth week. Any model that counts only the 1000 sales in the first week underestimates the lagged ROI of those first 100 GRPs. That’s because over the four weeks those 100 GRPs delivered 1,875 sales (1000+500+250+125) rather than the 1,000 sales originally reported. We can see that by considering Adstock, the ROI of the first week’s 100 GRPs almost doubles.

2 – Diminishing Returns

The second type of non-linear effect we see in media investment is diminishing returns. The law of diminishing returns states that as more of something is bought, the less utility is gained from it. A frequently quoted example is agriculture – as more resources are invested into an acre of land, the yield of corn does not increase proportionally. A more day to day example I like to use is buying coffee. The first coffee of the day is wonderful and hugely satisfying. The second is less satisfying and by the time I venture to more than three cups I’m not getting much satisfaction at all. These are both examples of diminishing returns and the same patterns can be seen in media investment.

Let’s assume we are investing in media to drive web traffic. If we buy 100 GRPs in a week we might see 100,000 visits. But if we invest in an additional 100 GRPs in the same week we might see these incremental GRPs deliver only 50k visits. And if we invest in a further 100 GRPs in the same week we might only see 25k additional visits generated. We can see the visits we are generating fall by half for every 100 incremental GRPs we buy. This is a diminishing return and it applies to all channels from TV to PPC.

What’s the cost of this diminishing return? Given that 100 GRPs might cost £350k we can see how taking the spend over a certain level in a specific time frame starts to reduce ROI significantly. Whereas the first 100 GRPs generated 100,000 visits, 300 GRPs only generated 175,000 visits (100k+50k+25k). Our CPV has increased four times from £3.50 on the first 100 GRPs to £14.00 on the third 100 GRPs. When we apply these examples to large scale media budgets, we can see how diminishing returns can have a dramatic effect on media effectiveness. In the worst case scenarios budgets are set at levels so high that they risk producing no additional sales response at all.

What causes diminishing returns? Diminishing returns are usually caused by market size constraints. If a brand has a consideration pool size of 5m consumers, with ten percent actively in market in a week or a month, over-spending excessively against this group will not change purchase behaviour sufficiently enough to match your increased spend, you will simply spend more, sales will not grow at a proportionate rate and your media ROI will fall.

What does this mean for media planning and investment?

The challenge for media planners is to arrange media investment to leverage the carry-over effects produced by Adstock whilst reducing the impact of diminishing returns.

The main implications for media planning are around setting budget weights and phasing to leverage these two effects to maximise media effectiveness. Budget weights have to be contained within acceptable diminishing return limits while Adstock carry-overs can be used to fill gaps in a pulsing media strategy.

Further reading

Broadbent, S. (1979) “One Way TV Advertisements Work”, Journal of the Market Research Society Vol. 23 no.3

Joy Joseph, 2006, “Understanding Advertising Adstock Transformations” (independent)

Fry, T.R.L., Broadbent, S. and Dixon, J.M. (2000), “Estimating Advertising Half-life and the Data Interval Bias”, Journal of Targeting, Measurement & Analysis in Marketing, 8, 314-334

WE OFFER MARKETING MIX MODELLING TO OUR CLIENTS: FIND OUT MORE HERE

The post Adstock and Diminishing Returns: non-linear advertising effects first appeared on Marketing IQ.

What is the craft of media planning?

Simon Foster — Sat, 21 Mar 2020 09:32:14 +0000

Over the last year people have been increasingly talking about the “craft” of media planning. Back in February 2019, Gideon Spanier the media editor of Campaign wrote, “the craft of media planing needs to make a comeback” and he further opined that “media planning has declined in importance in recent years – with serious consequences”. More recently, Steve Gladdis, CSO at Mediacom has argued that the “craft [of media planning] will become more important as a driver of growth”.

So why are we talking about media planning again, what does it really mean and why is it set to become more important?

The media landscape has changed almost beyond recognition in the last fifteen years. Since Google became mainstream around 2005, we have seen huge growth in digital media consumption and corresponding growth in digital media budgets. Because of its high measurability and its proximity to the purchase, there has been increased focus on using digital media to convert consumer demand into purchases.

But there is a critical distinction to be made between channels that convert demand and channels that create and grow demand. Whilst lower funnel channels convert pre-existing demand, mid and upper funnel channels deliver the brand preference that is essential to create and grow brand demand.

Many of the world’s biggest digital businesses recognise the ability of traditional media to deliver growth at scale; Amazon, Booking.com, eBay, Facebook, Google, HomeAway, Hotels.com and Microsoft are all huge users of traditional media and especially TV.

LinkedIn Case Study

A good example of a pure play digital brand using traditional media to grow is the recent campaign activity from LinkedIn.

Across 2019 it has continued to invest in offline media at scale – utilising print media – especially newspapers and outdoor.

Example LinkedIn tube ad October 2019

So why, given the perfect target audience reach of LinkedIn, and its own heavily used subscriber platform why would it wish to communicate in traditional media?

There are four key reasons for this:

First, consumers still spend a lot of time in environments where offline media will reach and influence them. They spend almost 3 hours per day watching TV. The reach of outdoor advertising remains undiminished, and the gradually declining medium of press still reaches over 11m adults every day in the U.K. (Newsbrands 2019). This ability deliver high scale reach, physical presence and mental availability is vitally important to the health of brands (see Sharp, How Brands Grow).

Second, these channels deliver strong visual or aural impact; it’s difficult to ignore or “Adblock” TV, press, radio or outdoor. This cut-through presence helps marketers communicate key aspects of brand personality quickly and effectively and drives memory building in consumers’ minds.

Thirdly, communicating in paid channels confers brand status, authenticity and trust – increasingly important characteristics in the current low-trust media environment of fraud and fake news.

And last but not least, traditional media is low cost on a CPM basis – TV, print, outdoor and radio all have CPMs that are typically below the CPMs you might see in search engines.

These four points are some of the reasons why the world’s largest digital superbrands still pile billions of pounds or dollars into traditional media channels.

So what is the craft of media planning?

The most effective campaigns combine both mass, segment and individual communications across both digital performance and high reach traditional media. But making investments across these multiple channels requires deep levels of audience insight combined with high levels of media knowledge plus experience in planning and evaluating all media channels and the experience of knowing how to orchestrate the selected channels into a single cohesive plan. And deploying this skillset is what we call media planning.

The craft of media planning is knowing how to use media to grow demand for brands rather than simply harvesting sales from within the current demand pool.

The toolkit required to use media to grow brand demand has the following component parts:

Understanding the business, marketing and campaign objectives of the brand
Understanding how the consumer sees the brand and relate to it, what they like about it and why they buy it.
Understanding the relative position of the brand in the category and how it is different from competitors
Understanding the purchase and usage patterns of the brand
Understanding how the category behaves – from seasonality to competition
Knowing all the different types of data and research that will help build understanding of consumer behaviour and media channel performance
Understanding which audiences, segments, behaviours, regions, towns, cities or postcodes are most likely to yield the target audience being sought.
Having a strong understanding of how all media media channels work, their cost structures and the type of business outcomes they can deliver
Having a strong understanding of the communications task capabilities of each channel – do they build awareness, increase consideration or drive sales conversions?
Having an understanding of how media channels can synergise to identify where different combinations can have a 2+2=5 effect
Understanding how media channels can be used creatively to engage consumers
Knowing how media channels are sold, bought, traded and managed
Be able to identify and define the type of campaign that is likely to deliver the marketing and campaign objectives most effectively and efficiently
Being able to organise the audience insights and media channel capabilities and costs into a cohesive plan of action which details of what each channel will contribute, how channels will be used, and how they will be measured and controlled.

Is media planning art, science or craft?

Producing an effective media plan is not an art and it’s not a science. But – it has the characteristics of both; good media planning requires logical data analysis and it also requires intuitive and innovative thinking.

The best media planners serve a professional apprenticeship followed up by practical experience – learning through experience – which makes media planning a craft.

So why do we need the craft of media planning more now than ever before?

Fifteen years ago everything looked like it was going to go digital. And it also looked like traditional media was going to decline terminally. But the reality is neither have happened. Yes, digital has grown enormously but it hasn’t moved so far up the marketing funnel as to displace traditional media – if anything digital has hovered around the lower funnel zone. Meanwhile, traditional media has declined but it still completely dominates the upper funnel.

All this means planning consumer and B2B communications has got a whole lot more complicated. Advertisers need specialists who can navigate through this complexity on their behalf, find the opportunities and produce integrated plans to deliver business objectives and commercial outcomes.

In short, the need for high quality media planning has never been greater or more pressing than it is now.

The post What is the craft of media planning? first appeared on Marketing IQ.

How to calculate cost per thousand (CPM) in paid media

Simon Foster — Sat, 27 Jul 2019 10:42:12 +0000

Cost per thousand is a key metric in paid media planning. It’s important because it tells you the comparative cost of reaching the same volume of target audience in different media channels. Did you know that the cost of reaching 1,000 people in TV is about £5 and the cost of reaching 1,000 people by direct mail is about £500? Or the cost of reaching people in programmatic display is about £1.50 and in radio it’s about £3?

If you’re a media planner allocating budgets it’s impossible to do this properly without an appreciation and understanding of cost per thousand by media channel.

Calculating this metric is not difficult – you simply divide the cost of an ad by the number of audience it will deliver.

Let’s work through some examples:

A radio station tells you an ad will costs £500 and be heard by 50,000 listeners. Good value or not? Let’s divide £500 by 50 (that’s 50 thousands). Answer £10. The range you’d expect to pay for radio is between £1 and £5 so £10 is very expensive.
A newspaper rep tells you a half page ad will cost £10,000 and run on print run of 1 million. Let’s do the calculation: £10,000 divided by 1,000 (thousands) is £10. In press you could expect to pay between £5 and £15 for a half page so a £10 CPM isn’t bad.
A DM data owner tells you it will cost £20,000 to buy a list of 10,000 names. The CPM is £2,000. That’s extremely expensive. Even the very highest quality premium DM lists rarely cost more than £500 CPM.

Accounting for the size of format of your ad

Some ad are bigger than others, in radio and TV some are longer than others. In digital display some are static images, some are animated and some are video. The size and format of an ad can have an impact on the CPM. Let’s look at a press example:

A newspaper sells 500,000 copies a day. A half page ad cost £5,000 and a quarter page ad costs £3,000. The CPM on the half page is £10 whilst the CPM on the quarter page is £6. By using a quarter page you are reducing your CPM from £10 to £6. Across a large campaign that’s a big cost saving.

How CPM affects reach

Assuming you have a fixed budget of £200,000, you will reach 20m people with a half page campaign (£200,000/10*1000), but you’ll be able to reach more than 33m with a quarter page campaign (£200,000/6*1000).

The post How to calculate cost per thousand (CPM) in paid media first appeared on Marketing IQ.

What is a TV Audience Impact?

Simon Foster — Fri, 10 Aug 2018 08:28:38 +0000

TV audience impacts are a measure of audience volume in media planning. In traditional media they are called impacts, in digital media they tend to be called impressions.

What is the definition of a TV audience impact?

An impacts is:

One person
Seeing one ad
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.

What is Paid, Owned and Earned Media?

Simon Foster — Thu, 28 Jun 2018 17:31:34 +0000

Paid Media is any communications media “space” that you have to buy from a media owner. Typically this would include TV, outdoor, press and magazines, cinema, radio and third party DM and email lists. It also includes all paid digital activity, whether that paid display, search or social media. It excludes things like SEO which are paid for by fees, but which do not involve the purchase of media assets from a media owner.
Owned media is any communication space or opportunity that is owned by a company or brand. The best examples are websites, retail space and shop fronts, product packaging, catalogues or even things like truck and van sides. Your own customer list is owned media. Your own pages or channels on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube are also part of your owned media portfolio.
Earned media is generally comments and reviews that are created and posted by third parties. Great reviews on Trustpilot or Amazon would be examples of earned media coverage. But so would bad reviews. Such reviews occupy space in a media sense, but they are not created or owned or by the brand itself.

The dynamic of control in Paid, Owned and Earned media

Paid media is the most controllable – you can control when it runs, where it runs and the message that is carried. Owned media is also controllable – these are your assets so you can determine how they are used and the messages carried. Earned media is different. Earned media is often owned and created by people outside your company. This means control is much more difficult. In some ways, earned medias is where your brand is laid bare – warts and all.

The post What is Paid, Owned and Earned Media? first appeared on Marketing IQ.

How is brand advertising different to direct response advertising?

Simon Foster — Tue, 19 Jun 2018 20:42:26 +0000

Brand advertising techniques are very different to direct response advertising techniques. Even when you are running an integrated multi-channel campaign it is important to understand the key differences between the two approaches so that you can orchestrate your overall campaign plan and budget to deliver maximum ROI.

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.