Television advertising television: measuring the ability of television promos to deliver ratings for new programs using single-source data

ABSTRACT

The entertainment industry relies heavily on advertising to attract audiences. This article demonstrates a method to measure the effect of on-air television promotions, or promos, on viewing behaviour, based on a well-established single-source method for determining the causal impact of advertising on sales. We illustrate this method on 18 new prime-time programs, showing that promos have a positive impact on viewing behaviour. Exposed viewers are substantially more likely to view the premiere episode of a new series, across a wide range of different television-viewing weights, frequency of promo exposures and program types. The research also shows evidence of reach-based scheduling strategies being generally more efficacious than frequency-based strategies. These findings provide guidance to help networks implement their promo strategy more effectively, as well as a method for future research into the effectiveness of television promos as this approach can be utilized in any country with a television ratings panel.

KEYWORDS:

• Television
• program promos
• advertising effectiveness
• single-source data
• scheduling

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank their colleagues at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, and Network TEN in particular, Doug Peiffer and Brian Rock for their feedback and support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Australian Research Council Linkage grant LP0882784 with Network Ten Australia. The funding bodies approved the research but were not engaged in the research design, process or authoring of this paper.