What is data-driven linear TV advertising?

The latest development in data-driven linear TV advertising is the ability to collect performance data on linear TV ad campaigns through data enabled TV. This means TV viewership data can now be tied to consumer action, creating a direct link between audience ad exposure and actual business performance. The ability to see attribution between ad viewing and action across platforms, and make the connection from viewing on linear to purchasing in any environment, has offered linear TV advertising a greater power over ad measurement.

For example, AMC Networks has made efforts to scale its addressable TV offerings, including harnessing linear media data to deliver nationally targeted audiences – an upgrade from advertising’s historical ability to only reach at the local level. The benefit of using data to scale to reach a larger audience in this way is that one single campaign can reach an entire nationally targeted audience base, follow them across platforms, and ultimately reduce confusion around tracking business KPI’s.

As of 2021, the typical US household subscribes to up to 200 networks per year. This means their attention is diluted across the TV landscape. Data and access are key to enabling an ad to maximize audience reach and cover broad ground, wherever target audiences watch.

Data-gathering tools have only grown in their precision and depth over recent years. Today, brands can use these tools to gather minute details about their target audiences, and strategize their ad planning on linear TV channels in a way that wasn’t possible with traditional television advertising 25 years ago. Data-driven linear tv advertising is a growing and ever-evolving industry built on the evolving software of any given TV buying platform demand-side platform (DSP) and their data-provider partners.

With our cross-channel ​​TV+® platform, Simulmedia takes a data-driven approach to buying linear TV ads (as well as connected TV). We partner with several data partners to ensure that every touch point in the buying process is driven by data and offers predictability and opportunities to optimize. From developing a target audience based on first- and third-party data, to placing ads based on who is watching, and where, to assessing creative messaging and reporting effectiveness, to attributing in-person and digital purchasing to TV ad exposure — data is at the heart of how we plan.

Our data partners make this data-driven decision making process possible. Our partner AppsFlyer uses data sets to attribute app installs to TV ad spend; Dynata uses data sets to understand the awareness lift of a campaign, and to measure and report how creative resonates within a market; and Google Analytics leverages existing site data to gather intelligence on how TV ad exposure drives site activity. These are just a few of our several partners who help make possible our data-driven linear TV advertising approach.