An Alternative Way to Buy the Upfront

The creative is the most powerful part and so the first thing to establish is whatever can be assumed about what the creative will be over the period the Upfront inventory will be airing. Then use agency judgment or RMT to establish which programming will resonate with that creative. Do this by network, by dayparts within each network, and by program for the broadcast inventory.

This will typically reveal about 10-20 networks whose programs so resonate with the creative, you can buy those networks on a run of network (RON) basis, therefore at the lowest CPM.

It will also generate a list of several hundred network dayparts (USA Early Fringe is an example of what we mean by a network daypart) which can be bought on a rotation basis for an efficient CPM.

Finally, it will reveal the broadcast programs to buy.

For maximum reach you'll want to buy the most dispersed schedule possible, with a solid core of higher rated programs.

Those lists will need to be further pared down based on advanced targeting considerations. If for example you are a CPG advertiser, you'll want to reach people in households which buy your product category and also have bought your brand in the last three years at least once but are not loyal buyers. TRA called these "swing purchasers" because they are the people where your ad can make the most positive incremental change occur.

Whatever source you use and whatever the advanced target, you'll want to remove advanced target under-indexing environments from the list generated based on creative resonance. This will still leave you with more media choices than needed.

Why did we start with creative resonance, and not with advanced targeting? Because the evidence shows that, on average, creative resonance has more positive impact than advanced targeting (36% vs. 28%). In the end, you should use them both.

What creative resonance does is it maximizes the chances that your ad will not break the viewer's mood created by the program, therefore your ad will have a head start in terms of attention, friendliness, likeability, relevancy, motivation, persuasion and sales effect. Planning and buying based on exalting and amplifying the creative turns out to be the key secret the industry has avoided learning for too long. It has a stronger effect than advanced targeting. Both should be used together, as described above.

Just before the Upfront, use a series level optimizer to look ahead and see what kind of advanced target reach you are going to get if you carry out your plans correctly -- and if not, play with the mix of programs vs. rotations/RON to see if there's a way you can increase average weekly reach against the advanced target. A series level optimizer is one that does not get fooled into "buying" upward spike telecasts. Irwin Gotlieb warned the industry about this years ago, and TRA solved it. Years ago, we shared the secret with Howard Shimmel and Dan Aversano at Turner so it's likely that today, Warner Bros. Discovery is using a series level optimizer, and hopefully many of us are.

These optimizer simulations will be valuable in understanding how the overall inventory falls into the individual brand buckets. Each quarter, review the upcoming quarter to ensure the optimal allocation of inventory based on each brand's current creative.

The buying sex/age target should be as encompassing as possible. First of all, it hardly makes a difference: TRA showed that sex/age targeting has almost zero predictivity of ROAS, whereas targeting Heavy Swing Purchasers increases ROAS +28% on average. Heavy Swing Purchasers buy the category heavily and have bought your brand at least once in the past three years but are not loyal to it. In categories outside CPG, there is also a Moveable Middle (as Joel Rubinson calls it) but it may not be as easy to identify at scale from available data. Creative resonance on the other hand is easily identifiable for any category.

Years ago, Dave Morgan at Simulmedia began using Persons 2+ as a proposed sex/age buying target, although clients may have clung to their traditional Women 18-49 or 25-54. The genius of using the broadest possible sex/age target (along with a "white list" of programs, networks and network/dayparts known to over-index on the advanced target) is that it leads to the lowest CPMs. A reasonable compromise might be Adults 18+, Persons 12+, Women 18+, Men 18+, Females 12+, Males 12+ depending on how many of your purchasers are known to be males vs. females. For many household products associated with women, today perhaps 40% of the time the buyer is male, because today nearly everyone is working. Sticking with 1950s thinking and depicting women as the only shoppers in ads for common household products is a form of stereotyping women.

In thinking and planning ahead for new creative in today's environment -- what my father would have called a tough audience -- extreme care must be taken to avoid the traps and achieve authentic and relevant storytelling. Here's a checklist to consider.

1. Does the brand team have a promising inspiration for an attribute to add to the brand image that will be timely, believable, consistent with the brand's historical persona and likely to increase attraction to the brand?
2. If not, give that out as an assignment to not only the brand team but also the agencies.
3. Pretest by the most valid means available without regard to the usual price and speed considerations -- meaning start earlier and budget for it.
4. Show diverse audiences but without stereotyping. Be open-minded about using serial commercials in which you establish continuing characters; this could be a way to create multi-dimensionality in your ad characters, making them more real as people.
5. Make sure that your brand and company come across as people who care about more than just making sales.

Authenticity is the key ingredient. If you fail there, you fail everywhere. The atmosphere is one of supreme distrust. If you do not trust yourself, no one will trust you. Make sure all your actions are worthy of public trust.

Click the social buttons to share this content with your friends and colleagues.

The opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author and/or subject(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage.com/MyersBizNet, Inc. management or associated writers.