In a quickly evolving advertising landscape, traditional demo-based buying is insufficient. Linear TV impressions are becoming scarcer and with scarcity, there is a need to make TV budgets work smarter and better. While there’s still around $66.8 billion¹ in linear TV spending overall, the majority of investments are directed towards traditional demo-based buys. But advertising to broad imprecise demographics is often wasteful. With greater accountability required for what is often the largest item on a marketer’s plan, advertisers need a solution to maximize impact and minimize inefficiencies. A changing landscape requires an advanced approach, moving away from outdated buying methods to a more efficient audience-based strategy – data-driven linear (DDL).

Unlike digital, where advertising and data have always gone hand in hand, traditional linear TV campaigns relied for decades on basic age and gender categories for example, Adults 25-54, Men 18-49. But in the last few years, linear TV advertising has made significant progress in reaching more precise audiences via data-driven linear (DDL). 

Is DDL worth the hype?

Data-driven linear is a better, more efficient way to allocate precious advertising dollars and impressions. With DDL, marketers can leverage advanced first- and third-party data to define specific audiences they want to reach. For example, say a cosmetics advertiser has invested significantly in market research and knows a lot about their target consumer for a particular product: integrating this data into the planning and transaction of TV advertising can significantly improve the effectiveness of the product’s advertising, at all stages of the marketing funnel.

Nearly all top national TV programmers create data-driven linear schedules, via data integration and optimization technology such as that provided by Xandr, or via solutions they have built in-house. Optimized TV plans combine audience forecasts and pricing to make best use of the advertising budget, selecting high-value networks, dayparts and programs for an advertiser’s specific audience, and maximizing the delivery of impressions or reach for that audience.

Xandr has been supporting the industry’s use of DDL for many years and we have seen that buyers typically enjoy 30% more audience impressions², as well as higher reach, than a standard demo-based deal with the same budget. More impressions and reach deliver better outcomes, which means increased awareness for top-of-funnel deals and improved sales for lower-funnel ads.

Despite the obvious advantages, some may still be hesitant to use data-driven linear.  There are misconceptions that buying targeted audiences at scale on linear TV is complex and time-intensive, which can make newer methodologies a tough sell against the entrenched infrastructure of linear TV demo buying.

Advancements in data and technology have streamlined data-driven linear buying by solving for some of the early challenges of DDL adoption such as inconsistent audience definitions and aggregated reach and reporting across participating partners. Xandr’s Invest TV platform enables advertisers to define an advanced target once and transact across major TV programmers with insight into unified reach. Technology can offer various entry points - such as self-service user interfaces, API integrations directly to agency planning systems for holistic management and managed support to help with different aspects of the buying process.

Now is a great time see what data-driven linear can do for brands

Leading up to the upfront season, it’s time for marketers to reconsider how to approach TV investments. The data-enabled capabilities of DDL offer savvy buyers with an opportunity to harness audiences on TV and change their advertising outcomes for the better.

While data-driven linear buying is still a small portion of overall TV spending, it’s gaining momentum – over 58% of advertisers plan to increase DDL spend in the next year³. This change brings better results for buyers and sellers and, ultimately, a better experience for consumers viewing ads. The power of data-driven linear continues to prove itself and should be an essential part of a marketer’s media mix.

Sources:

1. emarketer, October 2021
2. Internal Xandr data
3. 2021 Xandr Global Relevance Report