Many advertisers limit their media activity to ‘bursts’ or ‘key seasons’ to target their core audience at the right time, either seasonally or with additional offer push messaging. So why should you consider if ‘always on’ activity can provide a strategic opportunity for your brand?

Break away from the ‘safe’ periods

Not feeling obliged to rely on restricted periods of the year provides greater flexibility to not only take advantage of late deals (across all media) and seasonal cost per thousand (CPT) fluctuations, but also maintain awareness and increase baseline traffic.

Take advantage of seasonal CPTs

Following on from the above, although off-peak advertising can be considered higher risk, there are periods of the year where the CPT can be an attractive reduction compared to the advertiser’s key months. For example, if the product or service is at its highest ‘peak’ in September to November, a test in July where the CPT is 30% lower means that you can afford lower responses and still maintain efficiency.

Increasing efficiency by expanding the core media mix

Decreasing spends in the least efficient stations in key periods and redistributing budget into the most efficient by expanding dates, can ultimately reduce the blended cost per conversion (CPC).

Increasing growth

Saturating key periods may make it difficult to grow further whilst maintaining efficiency. ‘Off-peak’ activity provides an opportunity to not only maintain an efficient CPC but also increases volume.

Manageability of media

Although specifically TV related, increases in short ‘burst’ dates will also help to secure the target airtime, whether this is spot, station delivery or overall optimisations such as day of week. This also relates to programming opportunities: is there a key programme, particularly a seasonal peak programme that would be perfect for your audience but is only on once a year?

Developing response learnings

The more data you build, the greater the ability to monitor robust learnings for optimisations, such as the day of week or week in month over a period of time, not affected by seasonality.

All Response Media viewpoint

‘Always on’ or more frequent TV activity can provide an opportunity for many brands to improve efficiency and drive growth. Within online retailers, although they may ‘dial up’ or ‘dial down’ during key and off-peak periods, 30% of the top 10 spenders are active over 90% of the year on TV. In fact, the majority of advertisers are active for more than 85% of the year. If you are looking for new ways to develop media learnings or are looking to increase media activity efficiently, these points may be worth considering. However, it is also important to have an effective creative message reflective of the time of month or year, to ensure your brand can fulfill its potential.