In this week’s egtabite we take a look at RTÉ’s new cross-media research & planning tool launched earlier in 2021. The tool is capable of quantifying the total audience reached by any combination of RTÉ’s platforms and channels, whether it being TV, radio or digital, helping the media company’s clients to plan and analyse their campaigns.

Whilst industry data (i.e. TAM Ireland / Nielsen, JNLR and AT Internet) already discloses the number of people reached on each platform, RTÉ wanted to be able to provide advertisers with a single audience figure, taking into account the cross-over between different media types and platforms. Designed by UK based company, Telmar, who specialise in media planning solutions, RTÉ has now got a Reach and Frequency tool capable of producing a single audience reach figure, with duplication taken into account. The model launched can measure the net reach of a RTÉ multi-platform advertising campaign, the exclusive reach of a specific platform and the incremental reach delivered by specific channels.  

Net figures and incremental reach

To demonstrate the practicality of the tool, let’s take an example of a cross-media campaign on TV, radio and digital: Based on RTÉ’s model, a campaign of 100 TVRs on RTÉ Television complemented by 50 Ratings on RTÉ Radio and 100 thousand impressions on the RTÉ Player (digital) will reach 40% of Ireland’s adult population on TV, 24% on radio and just over 1% on the Player, totalling 65%. This is useful information in its own right, as it gives each platform’s reach. However, due to the platform cross-over, some of the 40% TV viewers are also included in the 24% reached by radio. What is more useful for media planning is the net - or de-duplicated - figure, which for this example campaign is 52% or an estimated 2.0 million Adults 15+.

The model can also be used to look at the incremental reach delivered by smaller channels or among more niche audiences. This would give figures on, for example, how many new people were reached by the Player. In the example above it would be approximately 24,000 adults.

Great feedback from clients and agencies

So far, RTÉ have had great feedback on this tool from both agency partners and clients.  The next steps are to roll the product out further through the sales team and to utilise it in highlighting the potential reach of cross media campaigns.