“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” With this in mind, this week’s egtabite features an insightful case by TF1 Publicité, which recently set out to find the answer to a poignant question. Which is the most sales effective combination for advertisers: TV + catch-up TV or TV + YouTube?

The sales house found that TV campaigns - even for FMCG products - are often complemented by a digital video campaign. TF1 Publicité  also found that advertisers allocate a large part of their budget to YouTube, despite the expectation that  budgets would be allocated to broadcasters’ catch-up platforms.

Together with MarketingScan, a research agency specialised in product testing and marketing performance measurement, TF1 Publicité set out to prove 3 assumptions. First and foremost:  that there is real synergy – even on a mass-market product – between linear TV and catch-up TV, where the latter brings an additional and significant contribution to linear TV plans and improves sales results. Secondly, that this catch-up contribution on sales is, at least, as effective as a YouTube contribution. Finally, that the sales house could further develop its digital turnover by recovering a part of the YouTube budget.

The Big Cheese

The advertiser participating in the research was Savencia, the second largest cheese group in France and fifth largest worldwide, well known for its Chaumes cheeses. In February and March 2017, research was carried out on the Chaumes TV campaign (700 GRP, 35-59, women), which compared the effects on sales of 3 media packages of equal cost in 3 geographical zones. The packages: linear TV, TV + catch-up and TV + YouTube.

The results

The results yielded by the test showed that TV + catch-up TV is the best combination, with regards to sales volume with an incremental 7% net impact on product sales. Additionally, the TV + catch-up mix also proved more beneficial to the Chaumes brand than a TV + YouTube mix.  While TV + YouTube added an additional 19% net impact on sales, the combination TV + catch-up added an impressive 31%.

TF1 Publicité attributed these great results to several things: the fact that music is the first content watched on YouTube and a third of users do not watch the screen during music content. As Chaumes has no real sound identity, the effect of adding YouTube to the campaign proved negligible. Another cause was the fact that the wider targeting of catch-up TV led to an increase in audience, in contrast with the ultra-targeting on YouTube.

The results provided TF1 Publicité with a strong case, demonstrating the effectiveness of TV and catch-up TV, certain to convince advertisers spending budget on YouTube.

Next steps

The study was so effective that the sales house plans to make others similar tests in order to create benchmarks. Not only with other target groups, but also with other advertising creations.