In our Ask the Expert Series, we interview leaders from our partner organizations who are helping lead their brands to new heights in AdTech. Today’s interview is with Rachel Herbstman, VP of Data Innovation, and Anastasia Dukes-Asuen, Senior Director of Advanced TV Data & Insights at Ampersand.
Could you introduce us to Ampersand and discuss your approach to TV advertising?
Ampersand, a joint venture between Comcast, Charter, and Cox, is a media sales organization that offers a unified footprint, unlocking unparalleled scale and unique data/insights for local and national advertisers. Ampersand gives advertisers true audience first planning, scale in execution, and advanced measurement of their TV investments, representing 117 million multiscreen households and over 75% of addressable households in the U.S. (64 million households). We help clients reach their unique target audience and deliver their stories – anytime, anywhere, and on whatever device.
How does adding streaming to a linear campaign, or vice versa, enhance overall campaign performance for marketers?
Herbstman: Marketers have recognized that multiscreen media strategies are the strongest as viewership continues to fragment. Unique audiences exist in traditional TV and streaming, and failure to include either media channel will reduce the total reach opportunity. These channels have proven to validate unduplicated audiences.
In our local business, adding streaming to a historically traditional linear-only media strategy increased campaign reach by 33%. Conversely, adding linear TV to a historically streaming-only media strategy increased reach by 209%. These metrics are validated by matching media exposures to an authenticated households subscriber ID and represent mass opportunities to reach new audiences with a multiscreen media strategy.
When considering reallocating media investments, how does Ampersand help clients determine the most effective channels for specific campaigns?
Herbstman: For a brand that historically invested in traditional TV, either national or local broadcast, we can provide insights to analyze the performance of any media campaign. The insights can include high-level metrics like reach and frequency and more granular metrics like unique reach per network. By seeing both the high-level results and more detailed granularity, we can provide optimization recommendations for funding other activation opportunities.
Our database of past campaigns consistently demonstrates that gaining new eyeballs with a national TV campaign usually plateaus after a few weeks. In other words, if most of your intended audience is reached after about three or four weeks of national television, reaching any new viewers can be exponentially more expensive.
We’ve built an Addressable Simulator tool for national advertisers that shows the potential impact of shifting a portion of the national media weight, specifically from the latter part of a flight, into addressable TV. Using our licensed Experian data set, we can measure any standard age/gender target or any advanced target to understand the complementary impact that addressable audience has on national media. This tool has dynamic inputs of CPMs and incidence rates, flight lengths, and budgets to simulate different scenarios and give marketers some intelligence on what holistic reach against that Experian segment they could expect with one given budget using brand-safe, traditional, and streaming inventory with an addressable activation.
Additionally, we’ve developed an interactive eCPM calculator that helps national advertisers assess the cost efficiency of adding addressable TV to their traditional campaigns. By dynamically inputting CPMs, marketers can evaluate tradeoffs between media types for upcoming campaigns.
Are there audience demographics that benefit from these combined media strategies, and what indicators or data points guide your recommendations to add cable to a local broadcast campaign versus other reallocations?
Herbstman: By including cable or streaming in a local effort, a client can use a data-driven approach to find more intended viewers in other premium content. Utilizing the vast library of Experian audience segments paired with our robust sample of 64 million data-enabled homes enables Ampersand to provide insights into the most valuable networks and dayparts that the intended viewer will likely watch on either platform.
With identity and viewing insights at scale, we can understand how consumers watch TV, even for inventory we have yet to sell. Our goal is to help marketers understand what’s happening as a result of their investments at a holistic level.
We can analyze a campaign running across hundreds of designated market areas to quickly and simply understand the holistic delivery of their broadcast and cable weight by pulling back set-top-box exposures on broadcast and Ampersand-purchased cable on our measurable footprint. Then, we can determine the share of measurable reach that each portion’s media weight contributes to.
We recommend optimizing towards a more balanced approach, where the reach levels for broadcast and cable mirror each other, creating a more effective market media mix.
Once we confirm cable’s potential in a market, we analyze network and daypart metrics to adjust key areas to optimize the campaign. We invite marketers to use these insights to measure their local or national TV campaign performance and garner unique perspectives to re-balance investments to drive reach and optimal frequencies.
Are there common missteps to avoid?
Dukes-Asuen: Ampersand’s decades of experience with media and data insights have allowed us to create an extensive database complete with targeting and measurement benchmarks. We use this database to curate best practices for brands and help set them up for success, keeping their goals and objectives for reach and frequency in mind.
Some clients spread their investment levels too thin, whether through short flight windows, low weekly frequencies, or targeting overly niche audiences that don’t fully support KPI goals.
One way to avoid these missteps is to set up a test-and-learn plan to validate a hypothesis and refine media strategies, ensuring campaigns are structured to garner meaningful insights. Ampersand can help ensure the test itself is constructed and supported to yield statistically relevant results, and the learnings can then be applied to the next campaign.
How does Experian’s data enhance your campaigns at Ampersand?
Dukes-Asuen: Within our Experian license, we can map the Experian Consumer View databases against our multichannel video programming distributors subscriber base in a privacy-compliant way to plan and activate them seamlessly. Experian has a rich set of audience targets and segmentation that we utilize to identify households that can be used for audience-based media execution with Ampersand. By defining the right audience—whether consumers are likely to purchase a product, exhibit certain behaviors, or demonstrate specific values—we enhance campaign performance and improve media spending efficiency for our advertisers.
Additionally, how do you believe AI and other new technologies will impact your media buying approaches in the future, and how might these innovations improve campaign effectiveness and provide value to your clients?
Herbstman: We have a strong use case on the measurement and analytics end. Using AI, we can aggregate a massive amount of historical data—viewership and exposure data. AI helps us understand overarching market trends and media performance to analyze campaign results and inform future campaign optimizations. The value of AI is in its role as an additional technology layer, enriching our insights portfolio and providing faster intelligence that enhances campaign effectiveness and delivers greater value to our clients.
Can you share an example of how precise audience targeting and segmentation, powered by Experian, have led to significantly better media spend reallocations and campaign performance for marketers?
One great example is how a national cruise brand dramatically improved its media spend and campaign performance by utilizing precise audience targeting and segmentation through Experian. By combining Ampersand’s addressable TV with Experian’s data-driven insights, they achieved a 14% incremental reach, a 3.1x higher frequency, and a 24% lower effective CPM. This strategic approach allowed them to reallocate their media spending more effectively, ensuring every impression reached their custom target audience.
Thanks for the interview.
For those interested in learning more about Ampersand, reach out for a personalized consultation.
Latest posts
Even though most kids haven’t even completed their current school year, now is the time for retailers to start preparing their 2012-2013 back-to-school marketing strategies. I remember growing up as a kid in rural Massachusetts thinking about how “back-to-school” TV ads were so irritating. Back-to-school? In July? I’m not even half way through my summer vacation! Little did I know back then that marketers like to get an early start to the back-to-school sales season by planting seeds with their target audience and hoping those seeds grow into a healthy crop of new customers. This remains true today and planting season starts even earlier. The back-to-school sales season represents a huge opportunity for marketers. Here are some facts and figures that help quantify the size of the market: According to the National Retail Federation, consumers will spend approximately $70 billion on back-to-school merchandise. About $23 billion of this is spending by parents of children in kindergarten through 12th grade. The remainder represents spending by students starting or returning to college. All told, the back-to-school season is the second largest consumer spending event for retailers outside of the winter holidays. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, this year there will be over 55 million students enrolled in schools from pre-kindergarten through high school. About 56% of these students are in grades one through eight, 28% are in high school and 15% are enrolled in preschool or kindergarten. About one-third of households contain children under age 18. That translates to roughly 38 million households. The vast majority of these contain school-age children. The back-to-school season is not just about reaching kids in elementary school, middle school, junior high school and high school. Another 20 million students are expected to be attending college. That’s a huge opportunity to sell things like dorm room furnishings, electronic gadgets and computers, just to name a few. With every marketing opportunity come certain marketing challenges. It’s never easy. Marketers of back-to-school products face their own set of challenges when vying for the attention of parents of school-age children. Here are some specific examples: Who are my key targets and how can I differentiate my marketing message? Targeting a market that includes a vast array of families with contrasting attitudes, opinions, motivations, lifestyles and shopping behaviors is incredibly challenging. Not all of these families are working from the same shopping list. And not all of these families will respond to the same marketing message. Segmenting your market into finer target audiences is highly recommended. How should my marketing budget be allocated across multiple online and offline channels? You have multiple sales and marketing channels to consider. You don’t want to build a marketing plan without a well-defined strategy for reaching your best targets. For instance, moms have a greater propensity to have a smartphone compared to the overall adult population. Thus, marketers should then be thinking about integrating mobile applications into their overall strategy. What can I do to make my message stand out above the crowd? Put yourself in the consumer’s shoes. I’m sure some of you are parents with children in school or in college. It’s a very crowded and cluttered back-to-school marketplace with many, many retailers clamoring for attention. One idea for standing above the crowd is to start by identifying your existing customers who are most likely to have families with children. Then send them an email early in the summer with suggestions for fun things to do this summer season. This can be followed up later with an email campaign containing some tips about getting ready for back-to-school. The key is to grab their attention and start engaging early. What variety of offers and promotions will enable me to capture a significant share of back-to-school expenditures? To capture your fair share of the back-to-school market you’ll need to develop offers and promotions that are both enticing and relevant. This requires learning as much as you can about your prospects and what motivates them to buy. For instance, a typical mom with elementary school-age children might enter the back-to-school season with the following thoughts: “I want to buy him the cool gear to go back to school with: new clothes, shoes, backpack and lunch box. And I don’t mind, I actually LOVE back to school shopping.”* That mom may quickly respond to your marketing message. Or, you could have a mom with these thoughts: “I’m not upper class – we’re in the lower/middle income bracket and money is tight for us. I budget for school expenses as I would anything else…and I won’t have my son miss out because ‘we can’t afford’ something… I’d give up something else first.”* She loves shopping for back-to-school, she has budget limitations, and she’s willing to make certain adjustments to her budget with the best interests of her child in mind. If you knew what she was most likely to be thinking, do you think it would influence the messaging and offers you would use to attract her? Well, of course. Attitudes shape shopping behavior. ___________________________________________________________________________________ Watch our recent webinar about planning your back-to-school marketing campaigns in style. And stay tuned for part two of my blog series on the topic in a few days. *Feedback was compiled from PHD in Parenting: http://www.phdinparenting.com/2011/08/22/who-should-pay-for-school-supplies/
Facebook has become a cultural phenomenon over the years and an object of affection for marketers to connect with its users. Experian Simmons has put together 10 consumer behavioral stats based on their National Consumer Study and New Media Study about the social networking site leading up to its Friday IPO launch: 39% of Facebook users say “this website gives me something to talk about.” Top 3 reasons Facebook users visit social networking sites: 86% to keep in touch with friends 72% for fun 66% to reconnect with/find people they’ve lost touch with 78% of Facebook users have shown support for a group or business on a social networking site. 34% of Facebook users have played games on a social networking site. Among those: 73% play social games (like Farmville, SIMS social, etc) 68% play casual games (like Bejeweled, etc) 73% play games on a social networking site once or more a day 28% of Facebook users with cell phones and 42% of Facebook users with a tablet computer have downloaded a social networking app for the device Adult residents of the following Designated Market Areas (DMAs) with 1,000,000 or more adult residents are the most likely to have visited Facebook in the last 7 days: ) Seattle-Tacoma, WA Austin, TX Salt Lake City, UT Portland, OR Washington, DC 15% of Facebook visitors follow a musical group on a social networking site, 14% follow a TV show, 11% follow a newspaper or news outlet and 4% follow a magazine. The average Facebook user is 39.3 years old. The average Facebook user claims an annual household income of $69,900 with annual household spending on discretionary goods and services of $15,500. Hispanic users of Facebook are 55% more likely than non-Hispanic users to say they like to follow their favorite brands or companies on social networking sites. Don’t miss 15 stats about Facebook, previously posted on the Experian Marketing services blog. . For more information like the data provided above please download the Experian Marketing Services 2012 Digital Marketer report.
Today, it costs more than $40 to send a five pound package from the U.S. to Canada or Mexico. The cost to Europe or South America is even more expensive. For U.S. companies operating on a global scale, such as retail specialists or ecommerce organizations, address accuracy is crucial. Organizations can’t afford undeliverable mail and packages due to a wrong address – the total cost would be unmanageable. Mistakes happen frequently, whether it is an error by the company or the customer. If a mistake is made, companies can’t ask the customer to cover delivery fees, leaving the organization with the bill. Retailers must also consider potential delays due to long distances and custom checks. Altogether, address errors result in a poor customer experience and a decrease in efficiency. Implementing international address verification will save money, time and improve the customer experience. By combining primary address data from national postal authorities with partner-supplied data, businesses can verify international addresses from countries all around the world.