In the past, marketers used to set aside massive budgets for advertising on TV only. But this is now changing, as brands and their partner video advertising companies are increasingly focusing on cross-media advertising strategies that combine traditional TV advertising with online video advertising. An odor-eliminating products brand in South Korea augmented its TV advertising with YouTube Advertising. Brand benefited from its cross-media strategy as it reduced inefficiencies in advertising investment on lone television ads. It achieved more than twenty-one percent incremental reach in addition to television campaigns along with a more balanced distribution of frequency.
In spite of the advertising budget split of about 25% for YouTube and about 75% for television, the reach achieved by YouTube was slightly more than 41% in comparison to about 49% for television. YouTube ad campaign also achieved two and a half times lesser cost per unique reach in comparison to the television advertising campaign. Similarly, like the above-mentioned odor eliminating products brand, a soft drink brand benefitted from its cross-media advertising strategy across television and YouTube during the first day of the Vietnamese lunar new year. Although YouTube campaign received just seventeen percent of the total media budget, it reached nearly forty percent of the population. It achieved over fourteen percent incremental reach in addition to television campaigns and three times lesser cost per unique reach in comparison to advertising campaigns on TV.
Today, people can choose what to watch from a vast range of content across television and streaming platforms. People also have now become much better at ignoring irrelevant ads. Thus, along with achieving desired reach and frequency, marketers are also required to ensure that people are watching their ads every time they are run. A meta-analysis of more than eight thousand brand lift surveys in the Asia-Pacific region revealed that YouTube drove a rise in ad recall of more than ten percent on average and at a highly reasonable cost. An eye-tracking study across YouTube, free-to-air television, and catch-up television found that attention paid to ads and ad recall lift are directly related. This means that the more the duration for which one’s eyes are on the ad, the greater is the ad recall.
The study noted that the percentage of ad minutes with eyes on the screen was highest for YouTube followed by catch-up television and free-to-air television in descending order. To determine ad spend balance, marketers can use Reach Planner, the video campaign planning tool offered by Google that includes TV data. In order to better know the performance of the mix of YouTube video ads and TV ads, marketers can leverage brand lift surveys along with cross-media reach measurement. By using a cross-media strategy involving TV and YouTube video advertising, along with optimizing ad spend across the mix, marketers can drive effective reach at an attractive cost.