The fifth edition of ThinkTV’s The Payback Series showed the ability of television to deliver return on investment (ROI), as part of the media mix across various budgets.
Outside of television, search was found to have the strongest ROI over the short term. It then becomes one of the weakest media selections for long-term timeframes, because search is inevitably driven by other media.
The Payback Series explored a range of key business, marketing and media considerations to interrogate the optimal media mix to support brand growth. The study looked into the campaign performance of 60 brands with a collective annual turnover of $23 billion and an annual media spend of $450 million.
Among the key findings were that television performs strongly in its ability to drive sales volume in the short-and-long term. The long-term benefit of television was particularly high.
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Media Channels – Short & Long Term Sales [click to enlarge]
The study found that while most media channels deliver positive ROI, few channels match television in the rate of return it can generate for sales growth.
ThinkTV CEO Kim Portrate said: “ROI is about the last thousand dollars you spent; scale-ability is about the next thousand dollars.
“If you invest in cheap channels based on ROI, and those channels don’t generate the right volume of sales before you start to see diminishing returns, you’re never going to grow brands. Other channels will be needed to make your media spend work the way it should.”
Short Term ROI by Channel [click to enlarge]
ThinkTV’s research explored in detail the best way to optimise media mix by campaign size.
The study found that for lower budgets, digital display and social should make up the majority of the media mix, but once budgets get up above $500,000 television becomes a crucial part of the mix.
Social and digital channels are less important in big-budget campaigns, while channels like out-of-home and radio start to become more effective.
Optimal Media Mix by Campaign Size [click to enlarge]
Search was found to be a demand harvester rather than a demand driver, with consumers turning to search once they are already in the purchase funnel.
Portrate added: “Marketers have long been chasing the best return on investment for their campaign spend but the research shows efficient ROI may not always be effective ROI.
“While ROI is important to all brands in all categories, not all ROI is equal. This research suggests a much-needed reassessment of channel selection is required to ensure campaigns are being optimised for maximum ROI and maximum sales impact over both short- and long-term timeframes.
“And that’s where TV comes into the equation. TV has the strongest media-driven incremental sales of any channel and the capacity to scale up with the only limit the size of the viewing audience. With an average monthly reach of more than 20 million people, TV is hard to beat.”