Aviva’s head of marketing Neil Costello on why the brand wants to buy linear TV programmatically
The insurance brand sees programmatic buying of TV content online as a route to cost-efficient ad targeting, and plans to adopt it for live TV as soon as it’s offered.
Q: What do you envisage as the future of your TV buying strategy?
We already buy video programmatically within the digital space as it offers cost efficient targeting; it becomes particularly powerful when combined with genuinely creative work that grabs the attention of the shortening attention spans online.
When programmatic is available within linear TV we will embrace it – if it offers cost improvements and targeting efficiencies.
Q: When buying TV, what is that spend based on?
We work hard with Zenith Optimedia, our ROI agency, to target a weekly television rating weight rather than cherry picking specific content.
The weekly weight is based on years of optimisations via brand tracking across all our direct-to-consumer product categories, analysis of TV weight versus level of sales and econometric modelling.
Q: What kind of audience data do you use when buying TV ads?
Our linear buying remains primarily rooted in BARB and TGI data with the odd foray into newer analysis methods, for example Sky IQ. A large proportion of our video on demand [VOD] is bought programmatically, using a variety of data sources to drive cost efficient reach.
Q: What is your approach to linear TV and digital channels, do you have different spots that extend into digital channels on catch up or VOD?
A proportion of our monthly spend is allocated to VOD; as with our weekly strike weight this has been reached via optimisations based on a variety of data sources.
When running VOD as part of a TV campaign we generally use our TV ad but have trialled specific online copies of the ads and using overlay units to allow users to find out more about the proposition featured in the TV ad.
Read our in-depth analysis of what the future of programmatic TV buying means for marketers.
