How to optimise TV advertising with real-time web analytics

HOW TO OPTIMISE TV AD CAMPAIGNS

using web analytics

"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” - John Wanamaker

TV Advertising is often cited as one of the hardest channels to evaluate.

!

And we’re talking about a lot of money here!

It was reported that a 30 second TV slot during the X-Factor final

cost £200,000!

Source: Campaign, 2013

That’s enough to buy

1 Ferrari 458 Spider 15 40ft by 10ft

Billboard banners in London for a month

2 Creative Directors for a year

So, here’s the problem…

How do we measure the effectiveness of our £200,000 ad spend?

(Let’s assume the ad is intended to drive viewers to a website)

Many TV campaigns involve advertising multiple times on several TV channels during the same hour.

The hourly granularity offered by most web analytics platforms isn’t enough to differentiate the uplift of individual adverts during that hour.

There might be more than 9 adverts in any one hour to evaluate.

Bad data

You need web analytics with minute-by-minute

data to fully understand how TV ads perform.

Luckily, there’s an app for that.

You need to pick the correct metric for measuring uplift.

A simple metric to start with is “number of visits that occur in that minute”.

Next…

Whilst all TV ads contain creative elements, direct response ads are designed to encourage viewers to immediately take action.

By accurately measuring the number of visits that occur during the airing of each advert, you can optimise the TV channels, programmes, and times in which you buy airtime.

This works great with Direct Response Adverts

moonpig.com sell personalised gift cards and followers. Their adverts are an example of direct response.

During holiday seasons like Valentines Day, Mothers Day and Christmas, direct response advertising is particularly powerful, especially when combined with offers.

There are a number of ways of measuring uplift. One method is to take a baseline of traffic before and after the TV spot and measure the uplift from this baseline.

For example, a TV advert airs at 9:05pm during half time of a sporting event. A baseline of normal traffic is created by averaging the 5 minutes before and after the spot. The uplift or difference in new visits that minute for a 5 minute period are attributed to the impact of the TV ad slot.

The uplift created by different slots, at different times, on different channels during different shows is used to optimise purchasing of those that have been most effective.

How to measure uplift

Here’s a pretty graph so it all makes sense…

Calculating Uplift from Direct Response TV Ads

TV advertisement airs at 9:05pm and subsequently sends traffic to the

brand’s website

1.The baseline of “normal” traffic during a TV slot can be averaged over several days to mitigate unusual traffic spikes or lows on a given day.

2.Picking different metrics that better represent traffic from viewers of the TV advert can have a huge impact. This can mean segmenting traffic and filtering out visitors from various traffic sources such as email campaigns. For example, you may want to only track the minute by minute uplift of visits per minute from “direct” and “search” sources within the UK.

3.Compliment the data with additional sources. In the UK, BARB data is the official source of television viewing figures. Combining website traffic with viewing figures and costings can help optimise the most effective channels and times to run future ads.

Taking It Further

Tablet and Mobile traffic can easily quadruple desktop travel during TV adverting campaigns. The graph below is real data during 4 TV Ad spots. The orange and red line represents tablet and mobile traffic respectively, the blue line is desktop traffic. It’s hardly surprising but sometimes just having the data to justify the impact of the second screen phenomena is hard to come by. GoSquared’s minute by minute data couldn’t make it clearer.

Rise of the Second Screen

“But the creative impact of an advertisement can not be judged by visits to a website, that’s like attributing movement in the lunar cycle to Tour de France winners!”

–Your Creative Director

As a caveat, this type of analysis should not be used as the only determining metric of success. The creativity in advertising is obviously one of the most important elements of success.

Yes, Creative is Still Number 1

Minute-by-minute analysis is best viewed as a complimentary metric to optimise TV ad campaigns. It is most effective at measuring the performance of direct response campaigns.

Wieden + Kennedy’s highly successful adverts for Three Mobile demonstrate creativity and originality is still top dog (or pony).

But if you knew that advertising on Channel 4 during the show “The

Inbetweeners” drove 10x as many visits to your brand’s website than

any other channel, surely you would optimise spend here?

So how do I get started with measuring and optimising my TV

advertising?

Enter GoSquared.

These are just some of the companies GoSquared helps to measure TV ads

GoSquared also works very closely with a number of agencies

including MNC who can take the analysis to the next level.

“GoSquared's minute by minute data has provided us with the unprecedented insights necessary to optimise our advertising spend.”

–Jonas Erich

International Marketing Manager, Delivery Hero (Parent Company of Hungry House)

Cats, Dogs and Ponies are slowly taking over the advertising world. Creativity and ingenuity will always be responsible for the phenomenal success of adverts.

However, if your brand has a website (it’d be surprising if it didn’t) and you’re looking to run TV ads that drive visits to your site, taking advantage of this type of analysis used by agencies such as MNC with data provided by GoSquared can dramatically increase the effectiveness of your ad budget.

Now that is #winning

Conclusion

Hugh Hopkins (@hughhopkins) + GoSquared

How To Optimise TV Advertising Campaigns With Web Analytics

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Sources

Campaign, 2013: http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/news/1219955/x-factor-ad-costs-soars-setting-itv-bumper-christmas/

London Banner Cost: http://directionalmedia.co.uk/products/rate-card

Images

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_Wanamaker.jpg

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/2gOlWTiuLuM/maxresdefault.jpg

http://www.happyjackson.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Moonpig.png

http://fanart.tv/fanart/tv/81950/clearart/T_81950.png

http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/i-have-no-idea-what-im-doing.jpg

http://www.mccgp.co.uk/marketing-news/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/pony.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Pvkd0rutOHE/UipHIrL2ICI/AAAAAAAABcY/3GTWQRjyNug/s640/three+pug.png

http://cdn.kanyevscreative.com/_assets/img/creativedirector.png

http://www.bhmpics.com/view-success_kid-other.html

http://www.adweek.com/files/blogs/three-cat-hed-2014.jpg