ABC and Accenture Strategy Discover the Secret of Sales ROI

One of the more challenging aspects of advertising sales is calculating ROI. This is made even more complex with the proliferation of content platforms and consumer devices. What really contributed to Sales uplift? ABC, in addressing this issue, just released Phase 2 of an attribution analysis conducted by Accenture Strategy. Phase 2 is the follow-up to a custom study completed in 2016 and used four big data sources to prove the role and value of content in context in driving Sales ROI. 

Cindy Davis, Executive Vice President Consumer Experience, Disney ABC Television Group, took me through the study and how it contributes to their overall research strategy. “Our objective in this study is to measure what matters and there was industry pressure to measure ROI,” she stated. To that end, “we found a very interesting connection between engaged audiences and their content and the sales and ROI we can drive to clients who participate.”

To achieve that goal, Disney|ABC commissioned Accenture Strategy which, according to Davis, “had a robust database of marketing spend. This year in our Phase 2 of the study, we examined 26 national brands over six industries and their corresponding sales data representing $25 billion in marketing spend, with $11 billion in television spending.” 

Mike Chapman, Managing Director, Accenture Strategy, global lead for Media and Entertainment Strategy Practice added that his company provided three years of data, which provided a “closed loop view of advertising ROI – types of impressions delivered, how many, which channels, what prices were paid and the impacts from those impressions delivered on incremental sales week over week.”

In addition to Accenture’s marketing data, Davis asked Accenture Strategy to incorporate four other datasets in their recent study – Nielsen ratings, E-Poll, Nielsen Social and Magid’s Emotional DNA, which Davis described as, “intriguing because we are in the business of connecting with viewers emotionally and Magid’s DNA work speaks to that.” 

Phase 1 Takeaways

Davis and her team, focusing on the impact of multi-platform TV (premium long-form video across screens and devices) and how advertisers can leverage that impact, discovered three major takeaways from the Accenture Strategy 2016 study:

      1.       There is a halo effect on sales with multi-platform television. “This doesn’t get talked about a lot,” Davis noted, “You hear about last click attribution in digital advertising. But TV goes a long way to establish and amplify the impacts of all media.”

      2.       Multi-platform is under-valued, under attributed and under-represented in the industry. Eighteen percent of all of the ROI impact is traditionally attributed to digital but it should actually be attributed to multi-platform television. “Television has been traditionally undervalued and digital over-valued,” Davis concluded.

      3.       Multi-platform TV has a long-term amplification impact. The study compared sales lift over years and found that by year two or three, you no longer see a sales lift impact from digital. But the study proved that there is a long-term effect on sales lift with TV.

Phase 2 Takeaways - Drivers of ROI        

Davis highlighted three key drivers to ROI that were identified in the Phase 2 study. 

      1.       Audience size matters. “Higher-rated programs deliver more ROI than lower rated programs by 2X,” she stated, “so not all programs are created equal which makes sense.” And notably, these higher-rated programs deliver more ROI than their cost premium indicating that higher rated and therefore more expensive programming is worth the cost in greater sales lift ROI. This is because these programs have a greater footprint, greater social amplification and therefore have the ability to reach people beyond a narrowly defined target audience.

      2.       Consumers’ to commitment to the content matters.  “We looked at both the expressed and the observed commitment to the content,” Davis stated, “and found that the greater the effort to watch, the greater the ROI.” And there is 2X the ROI with Magid’s Intentionality measurement.

  

      3.       Content quality matters. Davis’ group examined perceived quality, as defined by the viewer, and quantified quality indicators using Magid’s emotional dimensions.  They found that the higher the perceived quality of the content, the greater the ROI. And, using Magid, the three most impactful dimensions for higher ROI were Smarts (programs that are informative, real and inspiring), Edge (unpredictable, outrageous and funny) and Relatability (originality, suspenseful and intelligent). “There is a direct connection between the emotions viewers feel about a show and the benefits advertisers gets in terms of greater ROI,” Davis concluded.

“We are already starting to have good conversations with clients as to what this means for them,” Davis stated. “It goes without saying that not all GRPs are created equal and now we can prove that. Yes, higher-rated shows command a premium but they deliver even greater ROI at that level.” Adding to all of this insight the impact of social connection and emotional dimensions, ABC is poised to help their clients take advantage of the best that multi-platform TV can offer.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

 

A New Way to Buy Media in a Time of Shifting Viewer Patterns

This could be termed the era of consumer empowerment where brands must work hard to gain attention and purchasing patterns that lead to loyalty. Brand affection is pivotal. 

Gary Reisman, Founder and CEO of LEAP Media Investments , recently released an article on brand loyalty among airlines. But emotional attachment to brands extends to every product category. “It’s important for anybody, not just airlines ... the point is, as we've always said, that people buy things not based on being 18 to 49 or having done something six months ago or two days ago. They buy things because they have a desire. And that desire is built on a need,” he stated.

This, coupled with that fact that viewing patterns are shifting,  is leading the industry down a very dangerous path, according to Reisman. “By relying too heavily on data and technology while chasing scale for scale sake to drive revenues, we are killing the industry drip by drip” he laments. “I’m sensing that agencies and ad tech vendors alike seem to have forgotten why we are all here in the first place – to help marketers develop and execute strategies that build consumer relationship and sell product.”

What is the solution? For one, it is taking a step back and considering the value of the brand affection of the consumer beyond the raw data and the technology that drives it. From the marketers’ perspective, how do we discover which content, among the vast array of choices out there, bests connect with their brands' most passionate high potential consumers? And how do we narrow down the overabundance of choices even on a single media outlet? 

“By flipping the current TV model on its head," declared Gary Reisman, Founder and CEO of LEAP Media Investments, who offered the following strategic media recommendations:  

      1.       STOP buying content the way you are used to. Funneling money to content providers (e.g. networks) or specific content (such as shows) and “hoping” your most-likely prospects will be present and engaged. This is old school thinking. Historically, in a reach-based world this may have made sense but, today, not so much. These only act as surrogates for actual audiences because you are essentially seeking content that you infer may have a high concentration of your desired consumers. In fact today, there are more savvy ways to effectively target those consumers who you believe to be brand engaged and open to your brands messaging. In this way you are no longer targeting “proxies” but actual, high potential consumers. 

      2.       ACCEPT the fact that your brand targets are going to flow through numerous media platforms (TV, social, mobile, et al) at will. You have absolutely no control over it and cannot model for that behavior. But you can prepare for this consumer journey but crafting your message in a way that connects to your prospective consumer segments you have and then …

      3.       USE a “Customer First, identity-driven Approach” that identifies consumers more likely to engage with your brand messages and tags those prospects. This way you can follow your high potential targets, regardless of which content they chose to engage with. Follow these tagged consumers throughout their customer journey in linear, digital, social and mobile media.

Reisman added, “That’s why we developed our marketing and branding based model at LEAP. That is, to enable advertisers to first identify and tag their brand’s engaged and emotionally connected consumers and then serve ads to those customers throughout the media ecosystem. It’s identity-based marketing and where the market needs to go.”  Importantly, we should be leveraging the vast array of data and technology at our disposal, but toward goals primarily aimed at connecting with consumers that matter most to our marketer clients. 

As Cindy Davis, Executive Vice President, Consumer Experience, Disney | ABC Television Group stated recently, the next generation of viewers is different from previous generations and the survival of certain brands is at stake. Reisman agrees: "While change is difficult, the world has changed," he noted, and added, "brand marketers, agencies and media companies must all change our ways or we might just be left in dust."

This article first appeared in www.MediaVIllage.com