• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, June 10, 2016

Adding programmatic and addressable TV efforts for new motorized outdoor power equipment helped boost Troy-Bilt -- and even got them on ESPN.

Elizabeth Ballash, media director at Marcus Thomas LLC, speaking at MediaPost TV Insider Summit, says Troy-Bilt was looking to launch a new line, Flex, where one engine comes with multiple attachments, including snowblower, leaf blower, and lawn mowing.

The target audience was consumers 25-54, mostly male. Using GfK MRI data, Ballash segmented its audience into a number of categories, from the resistors to lawn maintenance, “loathers” -- all the way to lawn-focus fans, “aficionados.”

Ballash says a programmatic TV buy, through placemedia, accounted for 19% of GRPs while spending 10% of TV budget. Ballash says where usually one spends $20 plus CPM on TV networks, programmatic TV can bring down the cost down to around $12 CPMs.

“This got us onto ESPN where, in the past, we couldn’t afford it,” she said.

An addressable TV buy, from DirecTV, accounted for 7% of GRPs with 8% of TV budget. Overall the company was able to raise TV impressions by 33%. Other networks included in the overall company HGTV, The Weather Channel, TNT, USA, CNN, and History. Most importantly sales gains were over-achieved.