The global pandemic has propelled the TV industry to evolve faster in a year than it has over the past few decades. As a medium, TV now spans multiple platforms and screens, all while targeting and measurement capabilities have progressed to allow advertisers to achieve the ultimate combination of reaching and engaging with the right audience.
Advertisers must be agile enough to “meet” their audiences exactly where, how and when they watch TV, increasing, including streaming. For example, 82% of viewers watch streaming services in Australia, accounting for a nearly 20% increase between 2019 and 2020 alone.
To find out which cross-platform TV buy elements are working best for Australian TV advertisers during the ongoing pandemic, TVSquared used its global, always-on analytics platform to analyse response, audience and cost data from the past 18 months—accounting for millions of spots and nearly $100 million in ad spend.
Always-on TV analytics enable campaigns to be managed in real-time and continually optimised for the best results. The findings below represent an aggregated view of advertisers airing across Australian TV networks. All insights are represented against the overall average for performance and cost per response (CPR).
Time of Day:
Daytime consistently won out when it came to both cost-effectiveness and driving performance, while unexpectedly, Prime, traditionally the highest-rated time of day, didn’t quite deliver on advertiser expectations.
High: Daytime
- Response Rate +58%
- Cost-Effective CPRs: +50%
Low: Prime
- Response Rate -30%
- Cost-Effective CPRs: -87%
Day-of-Week:
While Sunday was the most purchased day among the analysed advertisers, it also proved to have the lowest response rate and be the least cost-effective. Therefore, understanding performance by day of the week can inform campaign optimisations and changes to buy schedules.
- Highest Response Rate: Monday +15%
- Lowest Response Rate: Sunday -22%
- Most Cost-Effective CPR: Saturday +12%
- Least Cost-Effective CPR: Sunday -22%
- Most Purchased Day of Week: Sunday
Spot Length:
On average, advertisers ran five different creatives per TV campaign. Always-on creative performance uncovers the top-performing creatives and informs optimisations to spot length, messaging and targeting. 15-second spots won out over the traditional 30-second spots, with a 60% higher response rate and a 54% more cost-effective CPR than the 30s, while 45s were the least effective and efficient of any spot length.
- Highest Response Rate: 15-second spots +34%
- Lowest Response Rate: 45-second spots -66%
- Most Cost-Effective CPR: 15-second spots +24%
- Least Cost-Effective CPR: 45-second spots -200%+
