Background information

In this week’s egtabite we take a closer look at an Addressable TV (ATV) campaign in Belgium, recently carried out by RMB in collaboration with telco operator Proximus, advertising agency Dentsu and its client Upfield.

Addressable TV, which was launched in 2020 in French-speaking Belgium thanks to a partnership between RMB and Proximus, has already proven to be effective in terms of driving advertising impact, particularly when targeting niche or geo-located audiences. However, the Proof of Concept (POC), recently conducted by RMB and its partners, reveals even more about the power of Addressable.

The latest research from RMB shows that Addressable TV is incredibly effective when combined with linear TV. By excluding those individuals already exposed to the classic TV campaign, the addressable campaign was targeted specifically at those who had not already been exposed to the ad, therefore significantly increasing incremental reach and at a lower cost.

Single ATV audience segment

It is widely known that linear TV is a powerful medium that can reach 50% coverage very quickly. Beyond this threshold, however, building incremental reach, even by just a few percentage points, becomes expensive.

Thanks to data from Proximus set-top boxes, it is possible to distinguish between households that have been exposed to a linear TV campaign and those that have not. What is new is that those who have not been exposed to a linear campaign, can now be combined into a single addressable TV audience segment. The process is carried out without transferring raw data between the operator and the advertising network and relies on user consent.

POC from the Solo campaign

This concept was put to the test with advertiser, Upfield, and their brand Solo. The budget for the Solo campaign was split 87% – 13%, between traditional linear and Addressable TV. The addressable campaign started a few days after the linear campaign was aired and ran for 2.5 weeks. The Solo POC clearly demonstrates that Addressable TV offers new opportunities to optimize TV plans and that this new advertising solution responds well to advertisers’ desire for increased incremental reach.

Key takeaways

• The ATV campaign increased coverage by almost 17% and represents 9 reach points in the overall TV campaign result.
• To obtain the same total coverage using only linear TV would have required an additional linear TV budget 162% higher than the amount invested in the addressable campaign.
• The cost per reach point is 7% lower for the combined “linear + addressable” campaign than for the linear TV campaign alone.
• This combination of “linear + addressable” frees up traditional inventory while meeting the coverage needs of advertisers and media agencies.

ATV: a development priority

“Audience fragmentation makes it difficult for advertisers to build reach. RMB is aware of this issue and has made it a development priority to offer opportunities to optimize reach, especially through technological innovations,” said Valérie Janssens, Development Director at RMB. Our excellent collaboration with Proximus in the context of Addressable TV has enabled us to successfully develop this first scenario for building incremental reach with an ATV campaign on top of a linear campaign. We are delighted that Dentsu and its client Upfield have followed us in this exercise,” she said.

Mathilde de Maere, AV Director at Dentsu, is delighted with the solution. “At Dentsu, and through our ‘8 ways to the never before’ values, we seek to inspire change in the marketplace and find solutions to meet the ever-changing needs of our clients and stakeholders. Innovation is at the heart of our company’s mentality. That’s why, despite the challenges and limitations that the Belgian market can sometimes face, we found a bold and relevant solution for our client, Upfield, through our partner RMB. By combining classic television with an addressable campaign, we transformed a strategic vision into a measurable plan with positive and quantified results. All this would not have been possible without the joint work between the Dentsu team, the RMB experts and our client’s openness to the proposal.”

Karolien Crombez, Marketing Activation Manager at Upfield, put emphasis on the importance of TV as a medium to spread Upfield’s message in a qualitative way on a national level. “Since people watch less television today, it is more difficult to reach certain target groups whose media consumption is more fragmented. In this case, Addressable TV provided us with a solution. Based on the results, we are happy to have entered into this partnership and will certainly consider it again in the future.”