Commentary
Comcast Study: 20% - 30% Of Video Ad Spend Should Go To Streaming
- by Karlene Lukovitz @KLmarketdaily, June 9, 2022
Comcast Advertising has released a report that recommends that 20% to 30% of premium video ad budgets be allocated to streaming and the rest to traditional television.
Comcast, of course, has a firm foot in both camps. But it says its recommendation is based on an analysis of more than …
Karlene Lukovitz is editor of MediaPost's "Digital News Daily" and writes the weekly "Video Insider" and "Advanced TV Insider" columns. You can reach her at karlene@mediapost.com.
This "study" is based on set usage by a panel of cable home subscribers. As such when it says that "viewers are still spending six hours and six minutes per day watching traditional TV" this is, no doubt, a set usage not a viewer figure as the latter would be much lower---say about four hours a day? The same reservation applies for much of the other data reported and when we talk about reach we need to remember that it's much easier to "reach" a household than an individual resident in a household. We also should define the time frame---daily reach,; weekly reach?; monthly reach? total campaign reach?---it makes a huge difference as incremental reach is much higher---as a percent gain---on a weekly basis than it is for a monthly schedule. The longer your time frame the less one platform adds to another's reach.
Nevertheless, the core point is valid. There are some homes---and consumers---- who are not reached easily---or at all ----by traditional TV schedules. So adding streaming---or, maybe, digital video----is a sensible consideration. However, if incremental reach is your only goal---and this need not be the case---you wouldn't plunk 30% of your ad dollars into streaming as a 10% allocation would probably get you almost all of the incremenal reach you require---at less cost. If, on the other hand, you are worrying about younger adults---those under the age of 50, you might allocate 20% of your budget to CTV----or even more---- to improve frequency as well as greater reach. The formula approach ---put 20-30% into streaming-----does not apply to every situation.