Traditional acquisition focused TV advertisers have always gravitated towards daytime TV. Why? Lower interest programming, the need to physically remove yourself from watching TV (i.e. by picking up the phone) and lower relative costs of entry of course!
But in these modern days of second screening and response-to-web, those first two factors become redundant as a response online is generally faster, easier and less intrusive on the viewer.
That’s all very nice but the potential pitfalls of peak evening airtime remain. Blanket bombing airtime across peak schedules will quickly see an advertiser’s budget turn to costly rubble. Instead, such airtime requires even more expert execution than even the best ‘business-as-usual’ daytime strategy. Planning, buying, measurement and optimisation require laser-targeted precision to ensure success.
And that’s where the immediacy and granularity of our ARMalytics system suite, combined with best value buying, regularly comes to the fore for our clients.
For one of our recent Christmas focused advertisers, we carefully selected available stations and programmes where we were able to access ‘DR-efficient’ level pricing for expensive, traditionally labelled, evening ‘brand’ spots. Was it a winner? Well, our client’s Christmas certainly came early. It delivered a three-fold increase in orders, meaning significant incremental volume. Cost per order reduced by 33%.
For another male focused advertiser, we successfully targeted spots in numerous live sporting events as a supplement to their daytime strategy. Through effective identification of only the most relevant events and their performance via ARMalytics, the strategy was honed to deliver up to ten times the level of response. While we have to buy these cherry-picked spots against more expensive TV buying audiences, we are still able to deliver cost efficiencies up to four times that of standard daytime activity.
How is this relevant to you?
Well if you’re advertising on TV and predominantly in the world of daytime, you’re in an environment which is getting squeezed harder and harder by sheer demand and finite supply in the market. Pricing pressures for 2016 are again upwards, following the trend of recent years, ranging from 5-15%, while viewing impacts remain relatively flat, if not in slight decline.
So innovative planning and buying solutions and broadening of activity to relevant areas and audiences outside daytime is absolutely critical in order to cost efficiently grow any TV media activity.
