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Mark
Green
SVP, Advanced Analytics
Spectra
It was equivalent to the Super Bowl for reality TV
diehards. The Survivor All-Stars finale, which aired in May,
managed to grip the attention of 24.8 million viewers. In
a high stakes battle of brains and brawn (and yes a little
guts for surviving 39 days without a toothbrush), the players
weren’t the only ones battling it out for the million
dollar prize.
Advertisers were playing a high stakes game of their own.
Opening up their pocketbooks, advertisers spent $390,000 for
a 30-second ad spot, hoping to reach the 18–49 demographic
and push their viewers to the supermarket checkout.
Three hundred ninety thousand dollars to reach 24.8 million
consumers—that’s not small change. That can add
up to sizeable sales if the 24.8 million consumers in the
audience are your brand’s target consumer. It can add
up to a big waste of money if they aren’t.
Brand vs. Media Targets
Notice that it is the brand’s consumer target and not
the media target that is discussed above. Consumer targets,
often precisely defined, are at the center of all of your
marketing strategies and tactics. Advertising, trade andconsumer
promotion decisions are made in an effort to reach and motivate
the coveted brand consumer target group. If reached successfully,
you know you can drive growth and sales (to pay for that $390,000
TV spot).
Media targets, on the other hand, can be described in one
word—broad. This is because media planners generalize
consumer objectives into easy-to-handle demographics. The
purpose is to fit consumer descriptions into media measurements
so media can be directly bought to address them. The generalized
targets are typically cast in terms of age and gender with
occasional qualifiers like the presence of children or income.
Major advertisers then merge these already broad planning
targets into a couple of even broader buying demographics
to corporately negotiate and manage many brands.
The miscalculation lies in the diversity within these broad
demographics. One consumer could be a 20-year-old college
student and the other a mom with three teenage kids. In the
high stakes game of advertising, large media targets will
never be able to concentrate enough on sales. The trick is
to connect marketing analytics and consumer target definitions
to effective tactical media targets.
Filtering Consumer Data to Find
Your Media Target
Building a bridge between marketing and media targets requires
sophisticated and proven data integration and analysis tools
[See chart 1].
To match the brand
and media targets, Spectra integrates the following gold standard
resources into our premiere segmentation platform, the Lifestyle/Lifestage
Grid:
- Consumption: MRI, ACNielsen Homescan
panel and proprietary point-of-sale (POS) data
- Attitudes: Attitudinal surveys
- TV Responsiveness: Consumer Marketing
Mix study (CMM)
- TV Viewing: Nielsen Media Research (national
television viewing panel)
Based on your marketing
objective, Spectra uses consumption information from the clients’
consumer panel to build a strategic target. Then Spectra filters
through the Nielsen Media Research people meter television
viewing panel to get a group of consumers in the panel that
match the marketing consumer target. Going further, Spectra
can also evaluate advertising responsiveness and attitudinal
segment definitions of the people meter television viewing
panel to create a consumer-centric Nielsen Media Research
target. The end result is an efficient television consumer
target that is centered on the brand’s marketing consumer
target.
Working Through the Media Buying
Process
Spectra’s consumer-centric Nielsen Media ratings can
be used at many points in the media planning and buying process.
- Planning: Provide more refined daypart
and network analyses
- Buying:
Negotiating network, cable and syndication
- Influence
Allocation: Optimize the existing inventory across
the advertising brands and their match of the audiences
to each program and the individual brands’ consumer
targets.
- Post
Placement Analysis: Evaluate the effective performance
of a media schedule or buy against the actual marketing
consumer targets.
To do this, these
ratings can be implemented in agency and third-party media
analytic software systems, or used within Spectra’s
easy ranking tools to help agencies and manufacturers analyze
television opportunities. Spectra’s consumer-centric
media analytics can also be utilized as a stand-alone metric
for measuring the marketing performance of media. Post analyses
show side-by-side comparisons of standard media planning and
buying targets along with the clients’ marketing consumer
targets. This performance analysis also provides a benchmark
for next year’s planning and buying process.
Surviving Your Media Buys—A
Case Study
A beer manufacturer, Yagger Beers*, is looking to drive sales
through a series of advertising purchase s. Their media target
is Adults 21–34. This group consists of 91.6 million
consumers, of which 51% are male, 65% are unmarried and 12%
are Hispanic. Due to the diversity within this group, clearly,
not all Adults 21–34 are the target.
To tease out the consumers that are more specific to achieving
their marketing objectives, Spectra consumer-centric Nielsen
TV ratings are developed. These more precise consumer media
targets [See chart 2] include the following:
Beer Loving
Storytellers—represent 19% of Yagger Beers
current volume, male 26, no kids
One of the Guys—represents 4% of Yagger
Beers current volume, male 34, no kids
Yuppie Sippers—represents 23% of Yagger
Beers current volume, female, age 29 with kids
Rock My World—represents 33% of Yagger
Beers current volume, male 22, no kids
Analyzing the Survivor All-Stars , we see that ratings can
vary dramatically within tightly defined media targets. For
Adults 21-34, 7.2% of their target is tuning in to Survivor
All-Stars [ See chart 3 ].
But if we look closer,
this program does not rank high among the Yuppie Sipper and
Rock My World consumer groups. Even though the program has
21–34 year old viewers, Yagger Beers would still waste
money trying to reach Yuppie Sipper or Rock My World drinkers—who
account for most of their volume—on Survivor All-Stars.
Instead, Yagger Beers could advertise on another highly rated
show, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation [See chart 4]. This show
indexes high with Yagger Beers’ three core groups, Yuppie
Sippers, Rock My World and Beer Loving Storytellers drinkers.
Becoming
More Efficient
Advertising spending is not for the faint of heart. Focus
groups to develop new TV spots typically cost $125,000. Commercial
production by boutique creative shops typically cost $250,000.
The cost of a 30-second spot in primetime is approximately
$300,000. The total media plan for a new TV spot could be
as much as $8–25 million. Launching a new product nationally
is often higher than that.
Given the amount of money spent on television, buying on the
marketing consumer targets instead of the surrogate media
targets can add up to sizeable savings or significant added
value and much more effective reach of the targeted consumers.
In fact, executing marketing targets in television has been
found to be 15–40% more efficient. Don’t just
survive the media buying process; be smart and tough and advertise
on shows your target consumers actually watch. In advertising,
more is not always better.
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