In the current TV advertising world, less can mean more.
For many, this means less ad frequency equals less weary TV consumers -- which should result in better advertising when it comes to brand awareness, attention and ultimately, more interest.
A recent study by LG Ad Solutions pointed out linear TV media schedules are still plagued by average brand frequency at 26.5, while connected TV (CTV) has an average frequency of 7.3.
At the same time, campaigns that allocated fewer than 20% of their impressions to CTV -- meaning that more money and placement was placed on linear TV -- and some brands reporting an even higher average frequency, in some instances reaching 150.
In recent years, the focus has been on making one linear TV buy and then moving on to find extended reach from CTV providers.
However, one interesting conclusion from the research was the idea to flip the script.
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Brands should think about CTV first for better ad campaign results -- and then add linear TV to build incremental reach.
That should resolve some frequency issues, according to the report. And it would place a greater focus for brands on CTV. This is not the case right now.
On average, advertisers allocate 67.5% of their entire TV ad budget on linear TV, and 32.5% for CTV.
All the while, total TV time viewing is more equal, says eMarketer: Linear TV with a 54.2% share of total TV viewing, and CTV at a 45.8% of total TV viewing.
Of course we have to factor in that LG Ad Solutions -- which commissioned this study -- has a dog in this hunt, and partnered with iSpot in this research. The study measured 87 brands across 12 industries resulting in 224.2 billion impressions.
Not considered is the effect of non-TV/not CTV brand media exposure from other video and display channels -- with social media and retail media among them.
Overall problems with CTV remain -- including brand safety, measurement and ad fraud. The latter can be a major issue. Fake impressions can inflate metrics and lead to the wrong strategy -- including where and when to limit ad exposure.
Frequency issues then can remain, coming in ways that we don’t always recognize.
Wayne, the fact that advertisers in general get much higher frequencies of ad exposure on linear TV should be no surprise as, to begin with they spend much more on linear TV which is where 80-85% of the combined ad GRPs for linear TV and CTV are to be found. That eMarketer chart is bogus---Ad-supported CTV accounts for only about 20-25% of all ad supported viewing--again, linear TV plus CTV. Second, only half of the supposed ad exposures are actually commercial viewings and when these are spread out over a quarter or a year so why is this such a problem? Every once in a while a consumer "sees" a brand's commercial. For heavy viewers this happens more often but for many it's a rare event.