Posted In: Media by
Michael Zervos,
July 15, 2024
Michael Zervos, Media Account Director
In a world of digital attribution modelling; last click, first click, time decay and a million variations on each – traditional media can find itself increasingly out of the attribution loop. There’s no denying the scale and impact above the line channels like TV can achieve in reaching new audiences, but when marketing budgets are tight brands want to attribute ROAS on every pound.
TV builds brands, alters perceptions, builds trust, and supercharges awareness metrics – all of which are essential in the long term growth of a brand. But in the short to medium term is it possible to tie back sales or conversions to TV activity or even individual ads? At Boutique we constantly work with all our TV partners to find new and exciting ways to improve TV attribution – whether that’s in real time or even retrospectively. Here are some of the more innovative ways we’re adding value to the TV space:
A great way to monitor direct response campaigns is through spot matching. The scheduled TV spots are uploaded to a digital platform which then tracks uplifts in traffic and matches the traffic spikes to the TV ads. This means you can see which ads in which content drove more traffic (or conversions) and optimise your TV schedule around this. If you factor in costs, you can even see which channels/programmes drove the most efficient conversions! Spot matching works for any e-comm focussed brand, but particularly well for direct response or offer driven campaigns which incentivise customers to go online immediately – the only real negative is the window of time which is monitored for the traffic uplift, which tends to very short, sometimes as short at 15 minutes – so if a customer visits your site 2 weeks later, the advert they saw would receive zero credit. This conundrum brings us nicely onto….
This method is essentially an extension of spot matching just extending the look back window from minutes to 7 days or even a month. Ad delivery is measured via the homes internet IP address and if a device using the same IP address (a phone, tablet or laptop) goes to the brands website any time within the next month – this is attributed to the original TV ad. As with every attribution method, IP tracking isnt without it’s pitfalls – the consumer could have seen the brand in numerous other places within that month so attributing a level of influence to the TV ad is very difficult but it allows a correlation between TV activity and website activity can be established.
One of the best ways to monitor the success of TV (or any above the line media) is also one of the simplest. Book a campaign based on geography and deliver all the activity in one place. Using sales or website data during and post campaign it should be easy to spot if success metrics have improved in that area vs the other parts of the UK where activity hasn’t been live. Success often doesn’t happen over night and for higher ticket items it’s worth analysing sales patterns over an extended period of time but a well-planned regional test can provide some of the strongest evidence of campaign success and ROI.
Finally, it’s always worth analysing the impact TV activity is having on search volumes. Individual spots might not drive obvious spikes in search volumes but over a period of time TV activity can be mapped against search activity and compared to periods where the TV activity isn’t live. If paid search costs are considered as well, the TV activity’s contribution to lowering costs per click and cost per conversion also become apparent.
Ultimately attribution modelling will always be difficult, no matter which channels you’re using; but as a data driven agency, Boutique pride ourselves on building the clearest possible picture of every campaign’s successes and then improving on them for the next one!
Drop us an email to hello@weareboutique.co.uk and we’ll tell you all about it.