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.

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.

1. TVRs (or GRPs, or TRPs) – TVRs or TV rating points are a way of sizing target audiences across both demographics and geography. 1 TVR is 1% of a target audience universe as defined by both demographic and geography. So, if there are 50m adults in the UK then 1 Adult National TVR is 1% of 50m – 500,000. If a national programme is watched by 2m adults it delivers 4 TVRs. TVRs are also a planning currency that allow us to calculate the reach and frequency of media campaigns.
2. Reach (or coverage) – Reach is the percentage of your target audience that is reached by a spot or a campaign.  TVRs build reach and frequency.  This is explained in more detail here.
3. Average opportunities to see (OTS) – Average OTS is the number of times on average that a member of your target audience will see your ad.

There are some simple calculations to illustrate how these numbers work together.  There is one thing you will need to begin this process and that is a reach curve. A reach curve looks like this:

This curve describes the relationship between TVRs and reach. It  illustrates how your reach (sometimes called coverage) increases as you add more TVRs to your campaign.  You will see that with each additional 100 TVRs you add to your campaign, your reach increases more slowly. In practical terms this is because some of your target audience will see your ad more than once, even in the early stages of the campaign. This is called opportunities to see or OTS.

How do  we calculate OTS?

OTS is calculated by dividing your TVRs by your reach: At 300 TVRs we have about 70% reach. That means the average OTS is 300 / 70 = 4.2.

How many TVRs do you need?

To calculate this you need to multiply your target reach by your required OTS. So if you wanted 70% reach at 4 OTS your calculation would be 70 x 4 = 280 TVRs. If you wanted 70% reach at 5 OTS you’d need 350 TVRs. If you wanted 85% reach at 7 OTS you’d need almost 600 TVRs.

Can we calculate reach from TVRs and OTS?

Yes, but only to a point. Reach = TVRs /  OTS. So if you are planning 50 TVRs at 1.5 OTS it would seem that your reach would be 30%. However, reach is not easily predictable. This is for two reasons:

1. First with you will see that whilst the growth in TVRs is linear, the growth in reach is non-linear i.e. it decreases as you add on every 100 TVRs. Between 0 and 100 TVRs we generate 50% reach. But when we add on the next 100 TVRs we only generate 65% reach at 200 TVRs.
2. Different types of campaign on different stations, phased in different ways, with different use of daily schedules (dayparting) will increase reach in different ways. For example, a campaign that runs in weekday daytime between 9am and 5pm may struggle to get over 50% reach even at more than 300 TVRs. This is because you will not be reaching the audience that is working during the day.

For information on our TV Planning and Buying training course please follow this link

The post TV Media Planning Terms – calculating media reach and frequency using TVRs 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.