How Brands Use TV Audience Data When Building Ad Campaigns

While traditional TV advertising is far from dead, the streaming audience size is rapidly catching up, especially with the introduction of new streaming services over the past several years. Along with the rapidly growing streaming audience pool is a rapidly growing collection of first and third-party data that advertisers can utilize when building ad campaigns.

Two of the key aspects of marketing are brand awareness and customer loyalty, and television commercials have historically been one of the most effective methods to maximize these two dimensions. Streaming audience data has created various new ways for advertisers to create far more precise, audience-targeted campaigns to share their messaging.

At The Remnant Agency, we specialize in buying remnant tv advertising and connected tv advertising at huge discounts. To help you learn more about what we can do, we’ve put together this article to help you understand how we can use audience data when building out your Connected TV campaigns.

What Are Viewer Demographics?

In short, viewer demographics are various data points collected on the people consuming your content. Traditional demographics include general data points like age, gender, and location. Demographics are used to segment and group audiences better to deliver your advertising more effectively. Viewer demographics are essential for traditional TV advertising campaigns to ensure your content is not reaching an irrelevant audience.

What Are Audiences?

Audiences are similar to demographics; they just include significantly more data to the advertiser. Streaming TV platforms can capture additional data points like interests, content preferences, purchasing habits, and more to build more comprehensive audiences. This allows advertisers to tailor their ad delivery much more finely, resulting in better engagement and ROI for your ad.

How Do TV Channels Gather Demographic Data?

In the U.S., the go-to source for traditional TV demographic data is Nielsen Media Research. Nielsen has been measuring TV demographic data since the 1950s, and their data is used by lots of media companies and advertising firms.

Nielsen measures viewer demographic data using statistical sampling techniques. They collect demographic and viewership data on a sample of viewers and extrapolate to the larger population. The actual process is a bit more complicated, but the basic principle of sampling is straightforward.

Typical Nielsen surveys use a sample size of 20,000 — about 0.01% of the total number of households that own a TV. The idea of statistical sampling is getting a sample representative of the larger population. Extrapolated trends are more accurate when the sample group more closely reflects the larger population.

Nielsen ratings are the most popular method of gathering demographic data, but some brands will hire independent market research firms to collect data for them. Other companies may have an in-house marketing team performing research.

What Kind of TV Audience Targeting Data Is Typically Available?

Streaming TV and OTT networks can capture more data about their users than traditional TV channels.

Behavioral Targeting

Behavioral targeting involves segmenting viewers based on certain behaviors or habits. Behavioral targeting is a bit more “organic” than other demographic data as it captures a deeper understanding of customers’ preferences and pain points. With behavioral targeting, brands can create precise, targeted campaigns. For example, instead of targeting “males aged 25 to 40,” behavioral targeting would allow you to target “males aged 25 to 30 who enjoy reading, luxury travel, with a college education”.

Demographics

Marketing companies typically start with the “big three” of demographics: age, gender, and income. These three categories are common because they are simple to determine and reflect relatively stable differences in consumer preferences and behavior.

Age

Age is one of the best demographic data points and provides a good, rough outline of core viewership. Typical age ranges for demographics include 18 to 24, 25 to 34, 35 to 54, and 55 and over. Age is helpful for targeting because most age ranges have preferences for different content.

Gender

Gender is another common demographic measurement and readily tracks interest differences in consumer behavior. While many brands have both men and women in their target market, the total proportion of men and women in that target market may differ. Companies can build strategies that are responsive to these kinds of proportional differences in target markets.

Affluence

Income as a demographic measure makes perfect sense — people with different amounts of money have different buying habits. Marketers can segment financial data by monthly or yearly income or personal vs. household income. Income is an extremely useful metric for companies that sell high-value products.

Contextual Targeting

Contextual targeting involves reaching your desired audience by the type of content your advertisement is showing on, rather than the specific behavior of an individual consumer. Rather than targeting an individual who has recently been searching for brake pads for their car, contextual targeting would target car enthusiasts by running on programs or articles that have content that appeals to car enthusiasts. Contextual targeting usually has a broader reach and an incrementally lower cost than audience targeting but is more of a saw than a scalpel.

Time-Of-Day Targeting

Time-based targeting is a classic form of targeting that involves showing advertisements at specific times. Like other demographic data, time-of-day demographics let you target specific audiences. For example, a company that sells products to students might air advertisements during after-school hours.

Geographic Targeting

As the name implies, geographic targeting involves segmenting and targeting viewers in specific geographic locations. Geographic targeting uses location data to tailor messages to specific geographic areas. For example, brands can use location data to send push notifications for visitors near their stores. While many modern e-commerce brands can target the entire United States, local service companies like lawyers are limited in geographical scope.

How Can Audience Data Be Used To Craft a Better Campaign?

First and third-party audience data are powerful resources that have transformed the effectiveness of television marketing campaigns. Here are a few of the key ways they’ve impacted the landscape.

Make Better Buying Decisions

The most apparent benefit of audience data is it helps you find the right times and placements to buy ads. Audience data allows companies to reduce waste in their marketing budget by allowing extreme precision when running targeted campaigns.

Ensuring that the right people see your ads at the right time is one of the cornerstones of an effective campaign. With audience data, you can drill into the most intricate aspects of who you will be receiving your ads, helping you choose the best times and locations to display ads.

Connect With More Engaged Audiences

Have you ever seen a TV ad that just didn’t line up with the content you were consuming? Think adult diaper commercials run during children’s cartoon programming. No one likes watching TV commercials, but most people are especially turned off by irrelevant ads.

Audience targeting allows you to tailor campaigns to fit specific interests and behavioral patterns, increasing brand loyalty and awareness. The more engaging your ads are, the more likely visitors will turn into loyal customers.

Moreover, irrelevant or spammy ads run the risk of turning a visitor off your brand forever. Nearly one out of every two consumers say they would intentionally ignore a brand that sends irrelevant or generic ads. Conversely, about one-third of consumers say they are more likely to choose brands that use personalized messaging in the ad copy.

Combine 1st & 3rd Party Data

Most brands have some in-house marketing data source, whether it’s just Google Analytics or an additional service to track ad performance, call performance, etc. This data is known as “first-party” data as you are personally collecting it. First-party data is incredibly useful but is even better when combined with third-party data.

“Third-party” data is aggregated by a third-party company and then sold to advertisers to help with decision-making.  First-party data might be more useful for connecting with existing customers, but third-party data might be better for attracting new audiences. Leveraging both assets is key to marketing efforts.

The main drawback of relying solely on first-party data is that it only tells you about people who have already interacted with your brand — not anything about potential new audiences. Third-party data will give you a much deeper understanding of your prospective audience than first-party data and provide a much higher degree of data granularity.

Advertising During TV Shows Builds Brand Loyalty

TV commercials might seem annoying for some, but they are a powerful method to increase brand awareness and customer loyalty. A paper from market researchers at International University found that television commercials incorporating key messaging features are positively associated with customer loyalty and brand awareness. Messaging features most directly connected to brand loyalty include:

•     Music
•     Trust
•     Interest
•     Brand recognition

Other elements that have an indirect effect on customer loyalty include:

•     Humor
•     Repetition
•     Message
•     Advertising

The results of this study provide clear guidance for brands — better brand awareness and customer loyalty is a matter of matching messaging with customer intent. Of course, this study does not imply that the listed features are the only things that relate to brand loyalty, but they form a solid base for marketing teams to start from.

Buying Remnant TV Advertising

The Remnant Agency specializes in purchasing TV and Connected TV advertising inventory for huge discounts. We purchase unsold ad inventory in premium spots at the last minute at a significant discount. This means that you’re able to hit a much wider audience with your existing budget and maximize your ROI.   We offer remnant advertising for TV, radio, billboards, and traditional print media, so if you’re looking to grow brand visibility and maximize your ROAS, contact us today to find out how we can help.