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Video Ads, Banner Ads in TV Program Guides Drive Tune-In

As popular as social media is, many TV viewers still tune into the TV listings on the set itself to figure out what to watch. They also spend a lot of time in the electronic program guide, suggesting that the guide itself can be mined by marketers for untapped ad opportunities.

About 94% of homes check out the TV listing grid on a weekly basis, according to data released this week at "The Cable Show" from digital entertainment company Rovi from a sampling of cable operators using Rovi’s interactive guide.

Rovi also found that about one-third of all TV viewing time is a result of choices that viewers made from the guide, with the average user interacting with it about 16 minutes a day.

Those statistics are incredibly useful for entertainment marketers eager to reach consumers when they are searching for shows to watch. They also underscore that connected TVs are likely to play a role as an ad vehicle in the broader video-any-screen-anywhere trend.

Specifically, Rovi said that when it ran a banner ad to drive tune-in to a prime-time premiere one hour before the show, the banner ad in the guide generated a 75% incremental lift in viewership from viewers who were already spending time in the guide during the hour before the show. The study also found that a network running sampling campaigns a few days before a show’s air date generated a 62% increase in viewing with a campaign that linked banner ads to video trailers for the shows.

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