TV ad buying is going through an automation transformation – and TV buyers have a need for speed.
But linear TV reporting has historically been a very slow affair that could take days, said Andrew Matero, VP of platform at Ampersand, a TV ad sales consortium co-owned by Comcast, Charter and Cox.
On Wednesday, Ampersand unveiled a new self-service tool within AND, its TV ad buying platform, that turns linear campaign reporting around in 24 hours so buyers can optimize campaigns quickly based on a short list of priority metrics.
Offering speedier, more efficient addressable TV measurement should keep more buyers investing in linear, Matero said.
In the past, “we [would] sometimes provide overly complicated insights,” he said, “when, in reality, clients only cared about a couple different things.”
For example, most TV buyers care about achieving incremental reach, especially for light TV viewers. If someone who doesn’t typically watch linear is tuning in, advertisers want the opportunity to reach that person. But it’s inefficient if buyers have to wait too long to access that viewing information.
Picking up the pace on linear TV reporting can help buyers match TV ad exposures to actual business outcomes, such as search lift and site visits, and optimize campaigns accordingly, said David Campanelli, chief investment officer at Horizon Media, one of the agencies testing Ampersand’s measurement upgrade.
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The updated reporting dashboard is a separate landing page within AND where clients create a campaign plan with desired flight dates, audiences and designated market areas (DMAs).
Audience creation happens using data from third-party partners such as Experian and Polk Automotive. Then, segments get matched to Ampersand’s viewing data and a buyer’s first-party data using LiveRamp.
Within 24 hours, buyers can see reach and frequency against a target audience on a national and local level, as well as an opportunity to ask for Ampersand’s recommendations on where ad budgets should move to most efficiently reach more households within a segment.
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Advertisers especially want help reaching light TV viewers because they’re “often missed in national TV campaigns,” Matero said. Linear transactions usually happen against broad demos, and impressions with no precise target are more likely to overlap, causing high frequency among the same heavy TV viewers.
Horizon Media, for example, sees “a lot of excessive frequency” against the same audience targets, Campanelli said. “Identifying light TV-viewing households and where to reach them is really important for us in selecting networks and dayparts that will extend our reach,” he added.
Staying on target
Ampersand recommends media plans based on the roughly 65 million US households it can reach on a one-to-one addressable basis. It can also call out which individual households are being missed by a particular advertiser’s campaign and which networks those households are watching.
That information is helpful for shifting budgets to the networks where light TV households are tuning in at a certain time.
Agencies can also use a data-driven linear approach to analyze viewing patterns and plan more effective campaigns based on the networks, dayparts and DMAs indexing highly with an advanced audience demo, such as people who often consume fast food or those in the market for a new car.
Buyers can then continue filling in the gaps with one-to-one addressable targeting for the households they’re still missing.
Bottom line: The faster reporting comes back, the quicker agencies can act accordingly to make sure they’re reaching as many households as possible within their audience targets.
