Samira Ebrahim, European ICP Strategy Director at Mars Pet Nutrition, revealed that an addressable TV campaign for the company’s dog food brand – Pedigree – resulted in the brand’s affinity with dog ownership and dog adoption among consumers increasing by 21%. Pedigree also experienced a 10% boost in the likelihood of consumers to purchase from the company, and a 43% increase in Ad Recall.
With the goal of ending pet homelessness, Pedigree promised to donate two dog shelters every time someone purchase a product. ASDA – the supermarket where the campaign was conducted – was chosen based on YouGov data indicating it is the preferred shop among audience segments that Pedigree was targeting ads.
Richard Fuller, Senior Director of Engagement at Finecast – the company that helped implement the campaign – joined Ebrahim at the Future of TV Advertising Global event in London to discuss addressable advertising and the success Pedigree achieved with it.
Ebrahim stressed the importance of addressable for Mars Pet Nutrition, where advertising to a mass audience would produce unnecessary wastage. She said, “We have a very specific audience, either you have a dog or cat, either you’re in the market for a dog or a cat, or you’re not.” She also highlighted the importance of making differentiations within the category of pet owners while planning media: “What you don’t want to be doing is sharing the same products and services with very different groups of consumers and making that be the focus of your plan.”
Talking about addressable TV in general, Fuller outlined the dimensions along which Finecast can segment audiences for targeting, including lifestyle and life stage, the interests and intent of viewers, actions or behaviour derived from their location, and their transactions (either in a category or having purchased a specific product). Using its data intelligence and planning framework, Finecast is able to combine data points across chosen audience levels to create a custom audience for targeting that aligns with brands’ campaign objectives.
He highlighted the new opportunities available to marketers with the advent of OTT live and video-on-demand services. The proliferation of a variety of services, Fuller noted, is important in offering more choices for planning addressable campaigns. He remarked that Finecast is particularly excited about new players including IMDb TV, Pluto, Roku, and discovery+, as well as smaller, more diverse, niche players such as YuppTV, an OTT channel which hosts Southeast Asian content.
Fuller also noted that the effective cross-platform measurement and attribution was an important step for addressable TV. He said, “We’re getting to a place where the advent of things like CFlight and total TV measurement really helps drive and grow this area, with real-time effectiveness. We’re finding out on a monthly or weekly basis how campaigns are performing”.
