At Yellowgrape, we love data. We want to know everything we can measure online. Our data proposition forms the basis of our clients' strategy. Thanks to data, we can control channels based on facts, rather than gut feeling. Unfortunately, not everything is always easy to measure. For example, how do you find out that the TV commercial, which will be broadcast during the Saturday night movie, actually made people visit your webshop from the comfort of their couch? Or buy exactly the product that was just advertised on television? Without asking, you may not be sure. However, you can definitely measure the impact of TV commercials on your online results. In this blog, you can read how to tackle this data issue.
Television: in 2021, it has been an integral part of the Netherlands for 70 years. Where it started in 1951 with three hours of television a week, which were only watched by a handful of people, television in the Netherlands has been available 24/7 for years. Both domestic and foreign channels and programs are available at the touch of a remote control. Includes advertising.
At the end of the 1960s, the first advertisement was broadcast on Dutch TV. It opened new doors in the marketing landscape. Years later, awards are even given out for the best (and worst) TV commercials. The reach of television and the associated advertisements is also still enormous. It is therefore not surprising that TV commercials will continue to be used in e-commerce. Even at a time when streaming services like Netflix are flourishing, we are still seeing a major impact among our customers there.
When you purchase airtime for a TV commercial, the price often depends on the number of GRPs of the (advertising) broadcasts. GRP stands for Gross Rating Point and this figure is used to express the reach of a TV commercial. GRP is calculated by multiplying the potential audience to reach and the frequency. Broadcasters often charge a certain amount per GRP. Therefore, for an advertisement during the most-watched program on Friday night during primetime, you pay more than for an advertisement during the umpteenth repetition of calling games on Tuesday night. The number of GRPs is logically higher in the first example mentioned. You often see that TV commercials are not purchased once, but in the form of a package of multiple channels/days/times for a certain period of time.
Precisely because you have to decide in advance which airtime to buy for your TV commercials, it is all the more important to properly analyze their impact and results. After all, if you know which broadcast moments have the most impact on your traffic and conversions, you can benefit from this in the future.
Everyone will understand that there is a good chance that traffic to your webshop will increase if your TV commercial is broadcast during a ratings hit. However, in theory, this can also be a pure coincidence. This is because in Google Analytics, you can't see which TV channel someone came to your webshop via. So how can you make this visible?
First of all, you'll need to know which channels to watch. Here, it is reasonable to assume that someone visits the webshop via a brandname campaign, Organic or Direct. After all, it does not sound entirely logical that, after seeing an advertisement, someone first looks back for the latest newsletter in their inbox and clicks through to the webshop from there (if they are already subscribed). As a result of the commercial, it is more likely that someone will search for the company name via the search engine, or enter the URL directly. It is therefore wise to filter your Google Analytics data on the first mentioned channels and analyse it with those results (sessions, transactions and turnover).
Then you explain the results from Google Analytics over the broadcast schedule of the TV commercials, as it were. By combining these data sources, you can discover trends. When you're broadcasting multiple TV commercials per day, over a longer period of time, you'll need a good “before” and “after” to define a zero point.
This can be done, for example, by comparing the statistics of the 10 minutes before the advertisement with the 10 minutes after the advertisement. Often (if all is well), you will at least see upward trends here: after all, if your advertising attracts attention, you could expect more sessions, transactions and also turnover. By measuring the entire broadcast schedule according to this yardstick, you will also see which days and times or channels and programs show the best results.
Of course, it is and remains difficult to say whether one commercial has yielded more (in terms of turnover) compared to the other. Or in relation to the costs incurred. After all, the range (GRP) and costs are different for each commercial. It is precisely by expressing the difference in turnover in percentage terms, for example, that you can compare different TV commercials. And when you compare the cost of a commercial with sales, you can calculate a CRR (Cost Revenue Ratio). So by putting different KPIs side by side, you can compare the results of TV commercials.
If you were also to aggregate the data, for example by day or part of the day, or group it by channel, this analysis offers you tools to make decisions when buying new TV commercials. This helps you use the budget more efficiently and achieve optimal returns.
Now you may be thinking: is there really no way to be 100% sure that someone has seen my commercial on TV? Well, maybe. It's not completely watertight, but you might want to consider showing a specific discount code or URL in the ad and analyzing its use. As long as no one shares this discount code or URL anywhere else, you can almost assume that customers who use the discount code have also seen the ad. However, this will not always be desirable for many organizations, and we recommend a periodic analysis of the online results, combined with the broadcast schedule.
Yellowgrape has already created such TV return analyses and reports for various customers, which provide good insights over and over again. We build these periodic reports both per commercial and per day. If desired, also grouped by broadcaster or channel. With the broadcast schedule on the one hand and various KPIs on the other, this analysis is actually a no-brainer for any webshop that not only advertises online but also on television.
Want to know more about the online impact of TV commercials? Don't hesitate to contact us.
