Linear Is Still the Reach Steamroller

By Bill Harvey In Terms of ROI Archives

This is the next report in the series which began with this kickoff article on March 28 that utilized Nielsen ONE data to show that cross-platform campaigns can reach over 90% of your target. This is important because P&G’s Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard told the industry on February 16 to aim for that level of reach. In the March 28 kickoff post I cited a specific 90%+ reach schedule of which 79.7% of the GRPs were in linear, 10.7% were in mobile, 6.8% in CTV, and 2.8% in computer. However, a campaign with similar overall GRP only got a reach of 59.74%, and the reason for that was that it went too far in linear – 99.9% of the GRPs, with tiny amounts of the other three platforms. This suggests that in the Upfront, buyers should make sure they have reserved enough linear and enough of the three non-linear types. As shown by the following reach curves, the priority order is linear, mobile, CTV, computer. (Note: Nielsen is one of my consulting clients, along with ARF, CIMM, Fox, Meta, Adelaide, RealEyes, WeAre8, RMT, Semasio and others.)

Source: Nielsen ONE, Adults 25-54, 2224 campaigns selected at random from about 41,500 cross-platform campaigns reported, 2022 broadcast year.

As you can see:

Linear curve tops out at about 60%.
Mobile tops out at a norm of over 30%, with outliers as high as 70%!
CTV hits the normative ceiling at around 16%, with outliers as high as the low 40s%. Why does mobile exceed the reach of CTV? Stay tuned for the next article in this series.
Computer curve does not quite reach 10%, with outliers as high as 13%.

Based on these findings, we recommend taking the following steps to prepare for the Upfront, and for all use of these four media from now on:

Study the outliers that get more reach than the crowd in each of the four types. Is it dispersion that causes those above-the-curve results? Is it a type of seller (or a specific seller) that is implicated in those extra reach mobile campaigns, for example? Do you need more broadcast prime? High rated environments build reach faster and have more sales effect.*
Agencies can learn even more by rolling up results across clients, and collaborating with clients in the process because the brands themselves have the fullest access to campaigns that have already run. That will give them more high outlier cases and therefore more actionable insights. Your clients will be eager to learn what you have learned in this way, and your conclusions about what you should be buying more of.
Especially if you discover that enough dispersion is what you have been lacking, and you decide to buy across more sellers in each of the four platform types, email me bharvey@rmt.solutions and I’ll give you some RMT clues as to which environments resonate with your current ads.
Keep an eye on this column because I’ll continue to share findings based on Nielsen ONE and we can compare notes next time our paths cross.
After the Upfront and you know what your inventory is going to be for the next 18 months or so, email me and I’ll give you some RMT insights as to what motivations are strongest in your corporate content stable, so as to pass those along to creative teams for the creation of executions that will resonate within the environments those new ads will run in.

Everybody is talking about cross-platform being the future. Well, it is actually in the present, Nielsen ONE has done it, and the duplication and reach data are real, not based on random probabilities, which lower level was set as an acceptable level by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) in their groundbreaking requirements manifesto for cross-platform measurement. Nielsen ONE, which exceeds the minimum requirements for cross-platform set by WFA/ANA, has been here since January 11. The database contains about 41,500 cross-platform campaigns which I’ve begun analyzing in these columns, and many others are analyzing behind closed doors.

The best analyses are the ones that you yourselves can make of your own recent campaigns which are already in the 41,500-campaign database. There you will be able to see data which I cannot see, because it’s your data. The fastest way to learn the most, based on your own true targets, is to dig into the data yourself.

However, like all of us, you already have too much to do, and important and valuable as it is, in the short time before the Upfront you probably won’t be able to get to this. Which is why I recommended to Nielsen that we offer to do that work for you, and Nielsen loves the idea and offered to do this for free. Please email me if you’re interested.

Cross-platform is here today and if you invite us to collaborate with you, you can lead the pack learning lessons first in cross-platform. It's free to all Nielsen ONE clients.

*Nielsen ONE Ads is not yet equipped with daypart summaries, so such analyses would in the short term require program level analysis, rolled up to dayparts and other such groupings by the user.

Posted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership self-publishing platform.

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The opinions expressed here are the author's views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage.com/MyersBizNet.

Bill Harvey

Bill Harvey, who won an Emmy® Award in 2022 for his invention of set top box data, has spent over 35 years leading the way in media research with pioneer thinking in New Media, set top box data, optimizers, measurement standards, privacy standards, the A…