Behavioural targeting can be used to better manage exposure, for less wastage and increased reach

For an advertiser the primary business objective is to create demand. Most advertisers have a defined consumer and will have spent time understanding who those consumers are and where those consumers can be reached. The task is to determine which media offers the greatest efficiency and effectiveness.

For some advertisers, the objective is to reach as many potential consumers of their products and services as possible and they worry less about wastage, deeming it a necessary cost to build their brand. In this respect scale and reach is critical.

For other advertisers, there product or service appeals to a very distinct consumer profile and in this case, they will not want to spend money advertising to people who will never buy their product.

Irrespective of whether the advertiser is seeking to maximise reach or address a specific audience, behavioural targeting on TV offers significant benefits

TV behavioural targeting enables existing TV advertisers (ie those focused on expanding reach) to address audiences that would normally be difficult to find. One of the most demanded attributes we launched for Sky AdSmart was the behavioural-derived segment of light viewers. Adding this attribute to the campaign enabled advertisers to extend reach in a way that would not be possible with conventional targeting. One other benefit we noticed was that the reduced wastage offered by behavioural targeting made it possible to switch investment out of less effective media an into more targeted TV.

The more obvious advantage of TV behavioural targeting is, of course, the ability to address TV audiences using the specific affinities evidenced by their own viewing behaviour. For those niche advertisers who would not have considered advertising on TV using traditional broad targeting with its commensurate wastage, behavioural attributes offer an opportunity for them to use the powerful features of TV with attractive returns on investment.

Developing accurate behavioural attributes from viewing data is challenging and can be both time-consuming and costly without both first-class content metadata and high levels of automation. Fortunately, the ThinkAdvertising solution makes this very straightforward, enabling a large set of standard behavioural attributes to be derived and allowing a TV operator to focus on maximising commercial return rather than managing the uncertainties of data and analytics.