Comcast Spotlight's Nora Shimmel Reveals Four Best Practices for Viewer Targeting

Shimmel has just completed a seminal study on the best practices for driving tunein and building loyal viewers in a time of almost limitless entertainment choices This datacentric study which surfaced four unassailable best practices enables Comcast Spotlight39s media and entertainment clients to better target the right audiences at the right time on the right platformThe Basis of Best PracticesShimmel explained the process of forming these best practices through research analyses quotThe best practices came about as a result of the expansion of our conversion studies We joined our adexposure data with our deidentified viewership data to amp8230 drive show viewership for our clients for all aspects of television whether live or in a catchup strategyquotUsing Comcast39s viewership data to do that at first manually required several groups within the company to coordinate their efforts They quickly standardized the process and could see quotwhat trends there are what methodology is most consistent what works and doesn39t workquot Shimmel said Her group analyzed and tested 36 campaigns across all genres and networks checked for synergies and conflicts between programming types and networks monitored the trends and outcomes and identified four general truisms that best drove results to benefit clientsShimmel explained that within Comcast they can access viewership data from 17 million homes resulting in ample data from which to draw conclusions quotWe don39t have to model anything We have true viewing data at our fingertipsquot It took about a year of hard work to analyze the results and formulate conclusionsThe Four Best PracticesAccording to Shimmel these best practices are the recommended ways media and entertainment clients should think about investing in TV The research behind these best practices has proven to drive tunein and overall content viewershipThe four key best practices that Comcast Spotlight has crafted to ensure a successful advertising campaign areTake a sustaining media approach Shimmel notes that this is specifically for episodic programming it39s different for an ondemand movie quotFor episodic programming we recommend five to seven weeks of sustaining media promoting multiple episodes as well as live and timeshifted viewingquot she statedViewing is fragmented and getting more so quotPeople are watching in so many different ways the idea is to give them an opportunity to catch up to find out what your show is aboutquot She added that live viewing is important but there is also value in timeshifted viewing in the plusthree window and even further out for viewers to catch up Having a sustained media campaign allows for the content to reach more people and results in a better lift in ad conversionMultiplatform touch drives superior tunein Once a multipleweek media approach is applied the next question is where the campaign should run quotTwentyfive of the 36 campaigns were running on both linear and video ondemand We bucketed the exposed households into linearonly VODonly or exposed to bothquot she continued quotand frequently we saw that the 39exposed to both39 group had the greatest conversion ratequot She attributed this to two things increased frequency exposure and the differences in mindset when watching on one platform versus anotherThe study continued with campaigns that ran on one or two platforms compared to those that ran on three or more quotThe exposed lift compared to the unexposed was nearly double for plusthree campaignsquot she concluded quotYou need multiplatform to grow your reach and to find people in the right moment to take actionquotInvest in platforms strategically Knowing that a campaign needs to run on multiple platforms the next step is to determine which platforms are most impactful how they should be layered and how this can best fit into the budget quotWe looked at how the different platforms work the difference between an average reach versus an average lift For a local campaign the conversion rate may be a little lower overall but the lift may be very high You need to have the broad coverage but also hammer home with a niche strategyquot she advisedBuild target audience segments wisely Shimmel recommends taking time to determine which target audiences are performing the best as well as which segments might be a target that was not previously considered quotKnowing that we are recommending niche on top of broad audiences we were starting to see a lot of don39ts such as amp8230 only targeting a previous season39s viewers who are already invested in the showquot Clients must expand their range beyond those previous franchise viewers for instance use conquesting to find viewers to grow your incremental households she advised quotUsing data is the best way to do thatquotHaving these best practices provides a strategic roadmap to improve overall performance for both media companies and advertisers in this everfragmenting and increasingly complex media world quotWe want to continue our efforts monitoring trends and getting even deeper data to look at time of year for example as well as additional analyses to inform catchup strategies and binging and other ways to grow consumptionquot Shimmel concludedClick the social buttons to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Comcast Spotlight's Nora Shimmel Reveals Four Best Practices for Viewer Targeting

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Charlene Weisler

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Comcast Spotlight's Nora Shimmel Reveals Four Best Practices for Viewer Targeting

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Charlene Weisler

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