Why you should check the costs of incremental reach

Brands looking to compensate for a loss of reach through traditional broadcast TV are turning to digital platforms; but they need to be wary of the quality and cost of that incremental reach, as the experience of Direct Line Group shows.

What happened

• The insurer relaunched its Churchill brand, adding cinema, social media and audio streaming to its previous TV and radio media plan in order to deliver additional reach with younger audiences.
• But after assessing factors such as viewability, view-through rates and consumer attention, Direct Line Group achieved less than 0.1% of the desired incremental reach across Facebook, Spotify and Twitter.
• And the costs of that incremental reach were up to 14 times more expensive than using TV.

Takeaway

“[Social media] plays its part, but it’s not a TV-like channel, and shouldn’t be used like TV. It’s more like OOH” – Karl Ward, Marketing Effectiveness Manager, Direct Line Group.