A Smarter Mix of TV and Online

Combine TV and online advertising to improve performance without increasing spend

What if you could increase the performance of your next ad campaign without spending an additional dime? Well, you can. Recent Yahoo! analysis of Nielsen data suggests that’s what will happen if you shift part of your television ad budget online. For traditional broadcast TV advertisers, online sometimes remains a mystery. But carefully integrating online into a traditional TV ad campaign can lead to greater returns for no additional cost.

Television is still a great way to reach a large audience. But the cost to reach TV audiences has risen dramatically even as audiences shrink. In 2000, TV cost per thousand (CPM) per household was around $14. In 2008, it was just above $26. Additionally, TV viewing remained flat between 2004 and 2009 while Internet usage among North American households has increased 117 percent over the same period. With numbers like that, it’s no wonder why advertisers are spending more on the Internet. But how should you spend online versus TV?

TV and Internet work together
The answer to that question lies in the synergy of TV and Internet. Academic and market researchers have proven that when TV and online ads are used together, the combined effect is more than the sum of its parts. For instance, a study from Nielsen IAG shows that brand and message recall is twice as effective when using both TV and online advertising.

Smarter_Mix_3

Nielsen data also showed that frequency of online ads improved TV brand recall. If a user sees just one online exposure prior to the TV ad, brand recall increased by 18 percent. If a user sees 20 or more online exposures prior to the TV ad, brand recall increased more than 50 percent.

A smarter TV-online mix
Now let’s apply this synergy to a real-world scenario. According to a recent Yahoo! analysis of Nielsen data, based on four specific test cases of brands in the entertainment, auto, consumer packaged goods, and retail sectors, a shift in ad allocation from national broadcast TV to online can help you reach more people nationally with the same budget. According to our analysis, a 10 percent to 15 percent shift from TV to online increased reach and significantly lowered cost per point (CPP). A smarter TV-online mix enables you to do all of this while reaching more people simultaneousl in different media.

How the math can work in your favor
The benefits in reach and cost per point were seen in all four test cases. But to better illustrate our analysis,let’s say you’re an automaker and you have a new hybrid car you want to promote. You have a budget of $10 million. If you spent the entire $10 million on TV you would likely reach 68 percent of the potential buyers in your specific marketing target. This translates to 8.5 million adults 18-49 who are also new car prospects. But if you allocated 90 percent of your budget to TV and spent the other 10 percent online, you would reach 70 percent of your potential buyers—which translates to 8.9 million potential buyers–for the same cost! Not only that, your cost per point would drop from $41,610 to $38,290. How’s that for efficient planning?

Smarter_Mix_2

Summary
TV works. But it works even better when it is paired with online. A 10 percent to 15 percent shift of the TV budget to online improved performance in our test cases without any additional spend. Want to see how shifting advertising budget from TV to online can work for you? Visit us at Yahoo! Advertising.

— The Team

Posted by Administrator

[ 1 comment | Categories: Case Studies, Industry Trends, Research, Yahoo! News ]