The first major single source media measurement project is delivering exciting results. 11,000 US consumers are in the landmark Project Apollo pilot, produced by research companies Arbitron and Nielsen and funded by P&G, Unilever, SC Johnson, Pfizer, Kraft, Pepsi and Walmart.
The project has released top line results for an unspecified pain relief product, more than likely Bengay which is manufactured by Pfizer. Audience data for current brand users aged 25-54 was used to schedule tv station choices and dayparts. The advertiser got a 16 percent increase in the delivery when compared to a conventional ad schedule based on traditional media planning tools. All this was done with the total budget at the same level.
Schedule optimisation was a two step process. The first step was to look at the amount of discrimination that exists in Project Apollo’s data for this target group. Discrimination is measured by comparing the target group rating to the total demographic rating. This step simply identifies if changing schedules around might get more GRP’s. In this case, it was for the brand buyers aged 25-54 compared to a normal Adults 25-54 target group.
Less than 30 percent of the dayparts on stations delivered the brand buyer rating points at about the same level as for the Adults 25-54 rating points. Nearly half of all the dayparts across the cable networks delivered significantly more or less brand buyer ratings than demographic ratings. This means it’s worth looking at the Project Apollo generated brand buyer ratings when selecting which station and daypart to use.
Having found that there was a difference for the buyers of the pain killer, the planners moved onto the next step.
The second step was to build a new schedule by selecting availabilities from dayparts that deliver significantly more brand buyer ratings than the conventional Adults 25-54. The network dayparts selected for the enhanced schedule included half network dayparts from the original plan and half new network dayparts from the Apollo data in step one.
On a $2 million budget for cable networked television, the optimised plan obtained 3% more GRP’s for adults 25-54 than the original plan. But in the target of brand buyer GRP’s, the improvement was an astonishing 16%.
The pain relief case study is the first in a series that Project Apollo will release.
Project Apollo’s pilot panel is designed to give advertisers a better understanding of the link between consumer exposure to advertising on multiple media and their real purchasing behaviour. The pilot achieves the single source goal that has long been seen by media planners and buyers as the ultimate in audience data.
The panel works by members being given incentives to voluntarily carry Arbitron’s Portable People Meter which you can see in the photo above. It’s a small, mobile phone sized device that collects the volunteers’ exposure to electronic media sources: broadcast television networks, cable networks, and network radio, as well as audio-based commercials broadcast on these outlets and on additional media. Consumer exposure to other media such as newspapers, magazines and circulars is collected using other more traditional surveys.
Data on consumer preference and purchases for a wide range of services and products are collected from panellists via ACNielsen’s Homescan technology, which tracks packaged goods purchases. Other traditional surveys are used to fill the gaps.
The whole lot gives an holistic understanding of participants’ media interactions and their resulting shopping and purchase behaviour. Whilst it isn’t perfect and it is very expensive ($350,000 to get in on just the test phase), Project Apollo is sure to deliver some key scheduling information over the coming years that can be used even in markets where it will be too expensive to roll out.