Tag Archive for: TV Advertising

Four things to know to build a slam dunk ad strategy this March Madness

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If you’re wondering where to get your sports fix after the Super Bowl, fret not – March Madness is just a few short weeks away! After being canceled in 2020 and witnessing a format change in 2021 to account for the rapid spread of the covid-19 virus, the 2022 NCAA men’s tournament will go back to its customary format: a 68-team field played out across three weeks at 14 sites, starting with the First Four in Dayton, Ohio.

With a peak viewership of 18.8 million during last year’s Final Four, the March Madness audience represents a significant opportunity to reach viewers. This makes the games a battleground for advertisers, vying to get maximum eyeballs and drive return on ad spend. Last year, a week prior to tip-off, virtually all ad inventory had been sold and ad spots were more expensive than they had ever been. This year, we see this trend continuing as the games take on a more pre-pandemic appearance, with fans rooting for their teams in person from the stands and games being held in multiple locations across the country.

“While advertisers flood the airwaves with March Madness-related messaging every year, buying look-alike audiences or broad ‘sports viewer’ targets, consumer viewing habits aren’t predictable. Deterministic buying with ACR data ensures you are buying the audience and not the assumption.” – Justin Fromm, Head of Research at LG Ad Solutions

With our ACR technology and granular targeting capabilities, LG Ad Solutions can help you get the most out of your media buy during this year’s March Madness.

When deciding how to place your ad dollars, here are four things to keep in mind:

1. Know Your Competition: Food and beverage, retail and auto advertisers go big when it comes to spending on traditional linear TV during March Madness. To break through the clutter, you can double-up your efforts and look to CTV advertising to reach specific, highly relevant audiences. LG Ad Solutions native ads are a great way to take ownership of the TV and interact with your target audience at multiple touch points throughout the TV viewing experience.

2. March Madness ≠ Higher Traditional TV Viewership: March Madness does not necessarily create a windfall of incremental traditional TV viewers. Our data show that medium linear TV viewers were just as likely to spend more time on other devices as they were to increase traditional broadcast and cable viewing during March Madness last year. While linear TV witnessed an overall decline in viewership last year, OTT saw a 12% lift in time spent during March Madness — another reason to supplement your linear TV buy with OTT & CTV to improve reach and prevent duplication.

3. Cross-Platform Viewership Is On The Rise: According to MiQ, almost a quarter of March Madness viewers who watched the games live were also active on other devices. 40% of impressions generated on second screens were on a mobile phone. With our precision targeting, LG Ad Solutions can reach audiences incremental to your linear schedule, across multiple screens to reinforce your brand message and keep it top of mind for all of your consumers. Additionally, as with all live sports, viewership waxes and wanes depending on which teams qualify and how interesting the pairings are. CTV, coupled with cross-screen is the perfect last-minute strategy to employ once the brackets are set.

4. March Madness Viewers Have An 80%+ Overlap With Comedy, Movies and News Genres But Not Necessarily Other Basketball Games: You don’t necessarily have to reach March Madness viewers through the NCAA tournament. There are multiple (less expensive) places across TV where these audiences can be found including across comedy, movies and news genres. Don’t assume that March Madness fans are generic basketball fans. Last year, 40% of March Madness viewers did not tune-in to an NBA game in the three months preceding the tournament. LG Ad Solutions can help you pinpoint exactly where March Madness audiences are across different platforms, networks and shows. Whether it is during, before or after the season, our ACR data allows you to target viewers more effectively.

LGAds March Madness banner

Interested in learning more? Download our March Madness Viewership Report:


Three ways brands can go for gold during the 2022 Winter Olympics

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The 2022 Winter Olympics are just a few weeks away, and ad spending related to the event is expected to reach $600M. Despite the controversy surrounding the host country, the majority of US adults are not against US athletes participating in the games.

The Olympics audience is a key opportunity for advertisers to reach a mass audience in this era of declining ratings. Sixty-two percent of TV households tuned into the 2021 Summer Olympics via linear broadcast at least once, so it makes sense for brands to find ways to reach this audience. Aside from the geopolitical issues, other hurdles that brands looking to capitalize on the Olympics face include 1) the average Olympic viewer spends just 45 minutes of their total daily viewing time on Olympics broadcasts and 2) advertising in the Olympics is expensive and crowded.

“Over its two weeks, the Olympics create a cultural moment that brings Americans together like few other events. To capitalize on this moment, advertisers previously had two options: face high rates and tremendous frequency to advertise in the content, or buy mass reach content with their message hoping to resonate. With our ACR data targeting, brands can now reach Olympics viewers across their devices with a relevant message and share in the gold.” – Justin Fromm, Head of Research at LG Ad Solutions

With LG Ad Solutions’ power of addressable TV and exclusive ACR viewership data, here are three ways your brand can win big during the Olympics:

1. Reach Olympic viewers outside of Olympic content
Brands don’t have to advertise during the actual games to reach Olympic viewers. With LG Ad Solutions, brands can target Olympic fans based on event viewership (overall or specific sports). With LG Ad Solutions, brands can run targeted native ads during major games and continue to pinpoint fans after the games are over on TV and  all the devices they use.
                 
2. Align your brand with other sports
From cycling to soccer, Olympics viewers are BIG fans of a variety of sports!  Of the top 10 programs watched by Olympics viewers, the top 6 across the broadcast networks and the top 5 programs across cable were all sporting events or sports news programming. Brands who love the Olympics should consider a broader sports targeting strategy. With LG Ad Solutions, brands can target sports genre premium AVOD programming, including channels from NCAA, MLB, and Fox Sports.

3. Stand out from the crowd
A quarter of all Olympics telecasts is advertising content, with just five categories accounting for more than 50% of that ad load: Electronics & Communication (16.3%), Automotive (11.6%), Online Services (9.7%), Food & Beverage (9.0%), and Restaurants (8.2%). With LG Ad Solutions, brands can target viewers with different messaging based on if they have or haven’t seen their competitor’s commercials.

LGAds olympics banner

Interested in learning more? Download our Olympic Viewership Report:


LG Ad Solutions Names DeepIntent Exclusive DSP for Healthcare CTV Ads

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ChrisPaquetteToday we are thrilled to feature a guest post by DeepIntent CEO Chris Paquette, as we announce the beginning of a very exciting relationship in CTV advertising for healthcare marketers.

Connected TV (CTV) is having a moment in the sun, which means advertisers are right there in the shadows. As the COVID-19 pandemic kept millions of people home with nowhere to go but Netflix and Hulu, CTV ads naturally increased as well. CTV ad spend increased 48.6% over 2020, according to eMarketer.

As healthcare and pharmaceutical companies get more creative with their messaging and migrate more of their budgets toward CTV ads, I’m thrilled to announce DeepIntent’s partnership with LG Ad Solutions.

LG Ad Solutions has selected DeepIntent as its exclusive demand side platform (DSP) for healthcare and pharmaceutical ads in the U.S. This means that DeepIntent’s DSP is now the only way healthcare advertisers can access LG Ad Solutions’ CTV inventory to reach 20M+ households nationwide.

CTV Ad and the Quantum Leap

Each year, pharmaceutical drug companies spend more than $4.5 billion on linear TV ads, which represents approximately 75% of their ad budgets. Everyone who’s ever watched TV knows how irrelevant and poorly targeted those ads can be.

After surveying patients to better understand how they feel about pharmaceutical ads, DeepIntent learned that 51% find relevant ads more memorable. CTV ads represent an incredible opportunity for advertisers to connect with patients, delivering a more relevant, personalized experience. Like linear TV, CTV offers the longer-length video ad units that pharmaceutical advertisers need, but with more flexible campaign management; greater programmatic targeting; highly accurate, actionable measurement; and more.

The quantum leap we saw with targeting in digital is going to happen with CTV and we’re at the precipice.

DeepIntent is at the forefront of this evolution. Everything we do is with the unique needs of pharma advertisers in mind, from launching the first healthcare-specific CTV Marketplace last summer to partnering with LG Ad Solutions.

DeepIntent + LG Ad Solutions

LG’s proprietary automated content recognition data — data on which ads and what content are being shown on each screen — will be integrated within the DeepIntent Healthcare Marketing Platform. Along with exclusive, priority access to LG Ad Solutions’ highly coveted inventory, this will improve advertisers’ ability to reach healthcare provider (HCP) and patient cord-cutter audiences.

Our partnership gives LG Ad Solutions clients access to our expertise in programmatic CTV and state-of-the-art targeting, planning, activation, optimization, and measurement tools through the DeepIntent Healthcare Marketing Platform. This will help them improve campaign performance and scale as well as script performance and audience quality with DeepIntent Outcomes™.

The Diffusion Group estimates that within five years, the number of broadband-only homes will jump 42% to 54 million. As content consumption increasingly happens in digital formats, advertisers are excited to reach HCPs and patient audiences in a more relevant, personalized way, while optimizing and measuring campaign performance quicker and more accurately.

DeepIntent’s data and DSP, and LG Ad Solutions’ media and content are the winning combination for making that happen. For the first time on a programmatic platform, advertisers will be able to demonstrate the lift and incremental patient population reached right down to specific households, while also linking that to performance differentiated between linear TV and CTV campaigns.

Looking Ahead

I hear it from clients, I hear it from pharma brands directly: Everyone is planning to increase their CTV media. We’re giving them the ability to do so measurably with better addressability and targeting. My prediction is that pharma investments are going to supersede the industry-wide trends with even faster acceleration for share shift. I believe we’ll see pharma embrace CTV more wholeheartedly in part because of the tools and platforms we’ve created, and partnerships like that with LG Ad Solutions— the first of many.

As CEO, I find this partnership particularly exciting because it validates our CTV strategy and predictions. There’s a shift happening, and DeepIntent and LG Ad Solutions are working together to help our clients navigate it and harness the strengths of CTV ads, which are more relevant and drive better ROI while also helping deliver better patient outcomes.

 

 

Hello, MTV – and welcome to our VMA Analysis

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Awards shows are often thought of as ‘rental audiences’ or audiences that are unlikely to regularly tune into award show networks. However, in 2020, 86% of the MTV VMA audience had tuned into MTV or MTV2 in the previous 30 days. When broadened to include all Viacom networks, that proportion grew to 98%.

LG Ads Viacom Network Logos
In fact, the VMA audience is much more likely to tune into Viacom networks than other TV audiences — The VMA audience is 160% more likely to watch MTV2, 100% more likely to watch LOGO, 90% more likely to watch BET Her, CMT, and MTV.

As with other event television on linear networks, the VMAs also drive future tune-in. 47% of new viewers (who had not watched MTV or MTV2 in 30 days prior to the VMAs) tuned in to one of the 2 networks in the 30 days following the awards show. The awards show also drove 13.5% new audiences to the event i.e. audiences who hadn’t watched the network on which the show aired in the previous 30 days, tuned into the network for the awards show.

Audience Insights from the 2020 VMAs:

Where else can MTV VMA audiences be found across the TV universe? We dug into the data and found that Games & Reality Shows, Movies and Comedy are the most watched TV genres by MTV VMA viewers. The graph below shows the total overlap percentage of the VMA audience with show genres.

LGAds MTV VMAs Genre Overlap

The 2020 VMA audience especially over-indexed for Ridiculousness (MTV – Music Television), NBA Basketball (TNT) and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (USA Network), making these shows the most watched cable shows for the VMAs audience segment. MTV – Music Television, TNT, TBS, Paramount Network were the most watched cable networks by the MTV VMA audiences.

While award show audience numbers have fallen steeply, these shows add value to the networks they air on as they bring in new audiences who stay on the network much beyond the duration of the show.

Partner with us to learn more about award show audiences, where else they can be found across the TV and digital landscape, and more. To learn about viewing trends for award shows including the Academy Awards, Golden Globes and Grammys check out our report here.

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For information on how to target audiences across linear TV, CTV & digital and optimize for reach and frequency, contact us at contact@lgads.tv.

 

What’s all that bracket? Cue March Madness!

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March Madness is on, creating a ripple of fervor among college-basketball-starved fans. The event was one of the first few of the year to have in-person viewing (up to 25% capacity). Similar to the NBA bubble in 2020, all games are being held entirely in Indiana to avoid the need for travel and subsequent exposure.

Let’s dive into the category and brand-level performance of the ads featured during the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament.

Insurance wins hands down

march madness sweet

In the Sweet 16 rounds of March Madness, the insurance category sees the highest spend by industry, followed by the restaurant industry and food & beverage.

Progressive hits a buzzer-beater, displacing GEICO as top spender

march madness sweet

Progressive spent about $866K during the Sweet 16 round of the tournament, just taking the lead from GEICO who came in at ~$769K.

Final scores and spends will be in after the ‘Final Four’ in the next few days. Stay tuned for the naming of the MVPs by total ad spend.

Take a look at the results of the following bracket, the Elite Eight here.