• by Wayne Friedman , May 6, 2011

CBS' hit "Hawaii Five-0" counted on its marketing success this year from some not-so-obvious viewers, via information gleaned from new TV set-top box data.

Working with CBS' media agency OMD USA, Simulmedia -- whose focus is targeting TV advertising campaigns through set-top-box data groups -- aimed the "Hawaii Five-0" launch at specific cable viewers, many coming from unlikely places.

"He really helped us identify underserved pockets of audience," says George Schweitzer, president of CBS Marketing Group. "It wasn't about getting a specific demographic -- say, 18-49 -- or age or education. It was about finding viewers predisposed to watching a police drama."

Armed with data from some 16 million set-top boxes from cable systems, satellite programmers, IPTV video services and TiVo, Simulmedia was able to narrow its target, step by step. The first filter was one that most TV marketers use: time-period tendencies. Simulmedia CEO Dave Morgan says that came from analyzing viewers most likely to watch 10 p.m. dramas on Monday night, where "Five-0" would be running.

"We projected to 106 million multichannel homes that were likely to turn on the TV on Monday at 10 p.m. They are really predictable in terms of loyalty," says Morgan. This led to a base of 40 million homes.

Of these homes, Morgan then filtered those who had a historical preference in watching crime dramas -- especially more lighthearted crime drama. That brought the number down to around 18 million. Morgan then added another filter -- eliminating homes that would be loyal to competing 10 p.m programming like the NFL.

All this brought the target down to 10 million or 11 million homes.

Then a month before the launch of the show -- September 20 -- Simulmedia analyzed some 20,000 shows. This was whittled down to around 300 shows to be targeted three days before the show's start. "Recency is very important to TV marketers," says Morgan.

Running "Five-0" commercials in cable shows, Simulmedia used historical audience preference indexes for the spots it delivered. Morgan says the results were stunning.

"We were able to deliver twice the concentration of the targeted audience," he says. The result was that the media plan delivered 60% higher audiences -- those who watched the initial episode -- than for conventionally targeted media in the campaign.

Where did these viewers come from? There were not selected from the pool of typical viewers watching other TV dramas.

In some cases, Morgan says, viewers were watching sci-fi programming, which meant many "Five-0" viewers were somewhat young and more male than for typical broadcast network dramas -- something CBS wanted. Also, one of its strongest results was grabbing new potential viewers who watch late afternoon TV programming, not prime-time programming.

The findings somewhat shocked Morgan -- who spent decades in Internet /online businesses before turning back to traditional TV. "It was an 'a-ha!' moment. I had no idea TV was that powerful. I've never ever seen anything like with the Internet."

To avoid privacy issues, the set-top data did not reveal demographic or more specific personal information. Instead, Simulmedia was able to provide a demographic overlay to reveal its target.

All this is good news for TV marketing of shows. Recent TV program campaigns have not been able to increase media budgets over the last several years. Schweitzer says Simulmedia efforts worked in this regard. "It's not spending more; it's spending smarter."

He added that the set-top box effort was one great component of an overall high-performing marketing campaign. Schweitzer said: "A lot of things are considered in the success of a show. Nothing happens in a vacuum. It was a very smart allocation of media."