This CPG Brand Used TV & Digital To Better Understand Their Customers

In 2017, TV ad spending will total $72 billion, or 35% of total media spending, while digital will finally surpass TV to capture roughly 38% of total spend.

While TV still maintains a large share of total spend, the rise of digital has changed the game for advertisers. How we measure TV advertising – and how these methods compare to those used in digital – continues to be one of the most challenging issues for advertisers. Even more so now as today’s audience is no longer limited to a single platform or TV set.

Consumers are always connected and are constantly shifting between mobile, desktop, in-store, and social platforms as they make their way to a purchase.

On top of this, channel-hoppers may be some of the best customers out there for brands. In one of our recent research reports, Examining the Three Heaviest Spenders, we found the top heaviest spender during last year’s holiday shopping season placed a high priority on the cross-channel experience.

In order for brands to succeed in this new era of the connected consumer, they need to have the right measurement and attribution in place to effectively track ROI across different platforms, especially for TV measurement.

This is exactly the predicament a major CPG brand was in as it sought to gain insight into the performance of its integrated TV and digital campaign.

TV + Digital Drives Powerful Results and Insights Objective

A global soft drink brand sought to promote the debut of its new custom bottle design with a cross- channel advertising campaign aimed at loyal customers and competitor purchasers in time for the bottles’ summer release.

The brand worked with Viant to execute and measure the impact of 80+ TV commercials as well as digital ads over a period of three months.

The TV ad campaign consisted of 5-second TV spots with a variety of creatives for each specific network or program. Traditionally, 5-second spots pose a major challenge for brands as most measurement solutions can’t capture viewing data that is less than 15 seconds. Leveraging Viant’s TV measurement solution, the client was able to capture this data, successfully tying it back to exposure and ad completion.

Viant’s TV solution captures second-by-second viewing behavior across 12MM connected televisions by leveraging automatic content recognition (ACR) technology from its partnerships with leading smart TV manufacturers. Once this viewer data is collected, it is then linked back to households in the Viant Advertising Cloud. Learn more about TV ACR technology in An Introductory Guide to TV ACR.

The TV ad campaign consisted of 5-second TV spots with a variety of creatives that correlated with the programming or network the ad was featured on. These 5-second spots proved too difficult for other competitors to measure as most measurement solutions can’t capture any viewing data on a commercial that is less than 15 seconds. However, Viant leveraged its ACR fingerprinting technology along with log information provided by TV networks to tie exposure and ad completion back to the individual TV spot.

As a result, the CPG brand achieved a very successful cross channel reach and frequency. The campaign reached over 26M individuals digitally, as well as 28% of Viant’s TV universe. On average, households saw roughly eight TV or digital ads throughout the campaign. Additionally, digital drove 49% incremental reach on top of TV, speaking to the success of a combined TV + digital strategy.

Lastly, the CPG brand was able to get deep audience insights and improve their targeting. Viant built customized lookalike audiences based on demographic information, as well as psychographic data like personality traits, lifestyles, and media habits. Going a step further, Viant also delivered deep audience insights on who were the most engaged audience groups through an A/B test comparing the exposed audiences to an unexposed control group.

Learn more by reading the case study.