Finecast, GroupM’s addressable TV specialist, announced it is throwing its hat into the cross-channel measurement ring with the launch of Total TV Measurement. Finecast says the new product delivers deduplicated reach and frequency measurement across linear and addressable TV, helping clients better understand the value they’re getting from shifting budgets over to addressable TV.
Total TV Measurement combines Finecast’s log-level data from across BVOD, AVOD, and other broadcast-like content, with data from European TV measurement business AudienceProject and BARB’s panel data via TechEdge.
This will allow advertisers to understand post-campaign exactly how many people they reached and how often – useful data in and of itself. But Finecast says the value will come from helping advertisers understand the reach contribution of linear and addressable TV. This includes reach contribution towards specific BARB demographic audiences, with plans to extend this towards addressable audiences such as affluence and household composition.
Moving beyond incremental reach
Addressable TV – in this case any TV-like content where the ads are targeted to each individual viewer, including the majority of CTV viewing and addressable linear ads – are often viewed as useful for delivering incremental reach beyond a standard linear campaign. You put the big money into linear, and they buy addressable ads to top up total reach. But Finecast says this isn’t always the most cost effective way of maximising reach. In some cases, advertisers can get a lot more value by investing the majority of their budget in addressable ads.
Total TV Measurement is designed to help clarify this, showing how addressable TV and linear TV can work most efficiently together to optimise reach at different points of the reach curve. Buyers can then plug that data into their own planning tools, either to make adjustments mid-campaign or to inform future campaigns, reaching their audiences more efficiently as a result.
Finecast’s head of marketing science Samantha Lister told VideoWeek that Total TV Measurement has been up and running for a few years now, with almost 100 Total TV Measurement studies having been run already within GroupM’s agencies.
“We know it works, we’ve seen it across many campaigns,” said Lister. She highlighted one case study with TalkTalk, which found that addressable TV drove 2.3 percent more incremental reach compared with linear TV for 18-34 year olds, and 1.3 percent more incremental reach across all adults. Significantly, this meant cost savings of around £227,000.
And, perhaps unsurprisingly given addressable TV’s targeting capabilities, it’s particularly effective for brands seeking particular demographic groups. “Typically we see addressable deliver 1-3 percent extra incremental reach for all adults, but it can reach up to 7-10 percent for more niche demographics,” said Lister.
Finecast’s methodology has now been verified via an independent assurance review from PwC’s Media Assurance practice, hence the full release of the tool today.
Of course, Finecast is by no means the only business solving for cross-media measurement. ISBA’s Project Origin, NBCUniversal and Sky’s CFlight, and various independent projects from third-party measurement providers are all running after that same objective.
Lister said that GroupM has been in conversations with the wider industry initiatives, and will continue to be involved in those conversations. “But ultimately, we’re not there yet with those solutions,” she said, “and we had to answer our clients’ questions. So this is a standalone project, and it provides answers to our clients questions in a really robust and rigorous way.”
