It’s that time of the year: When marketers are scrambling to get their Christmas season media plans finalised, when big budgets are being spent on television advertising and everyone, CMOs in particular, hope the holiday will bring in sales. John Lewis is apparently paying Elton John £5m to appear in their Christmas ad, while Marks & Spencer hired boy band, Take That, for theirs.
With marketers spending so much time and effort on choosing the right product mix and tweaking the TV spots in the hope that it will bring in the desired results, you have to wonder if anyone is looking at the results of last year’s Christmas advertising campaigns before spending a fortune again this year? How many sales did last year’s TV ads generate? Which channels worked and which didn’t? What time of the day delivered the best results? The answer is most likely that many aren’t taking into account the results of past Christmas campaigns, because many brands are not using attribution software to track and optimise their TV advertising yet.
At DCMN, we believe that brands should use attribution technology to track and optimise the performance of their campaigns to make sure they know exactly which creative, channels, days and day parts are performing the best for them and delivering the expected results. By doing so, brands will be able to plan an even better campaign next year and advocate for budgets based on actual results. Or, if they start holiday advertising early this year, they can even adapt their media plans month by month until December.
When using tracking technology, it’s important not to confuse exactly which key performance indicators should be tracked. Brands usually track the performance of their campaigns through general, post-campaign analysis based on reach, frequency, GRP, etc. This means they track the performance of the media used. At DCMN, we use our proprietary tool, DC Analytics to track media performance by measuring indicators including website visits, bookings, sales, registrations or downloads a brand has received as a direct result of their offline (TV and radio) advertising. Media performance is still crucial to ensure broad brand awareness, but the tracking done through our TV attribution software is what shows the real impact of the ads on the client’s business.
Measuring this impact allows brands to generate actionable insights about campaign, with multiple layers of analysis to optimise around the key performance indicators (KPIs) that are most important to them. As Black Friday approaches, advertisers would do well not to miss an opportunity to see exactly what percentage of their sales can be attributed to those catchy holiday campaigns.
If you’re interested in learning more about DC Anlaytics, head over to dcanalytics.com or get in touch via support@dcanalytics.com for additional info.
