Industry
Media & Entertainment
Challenge
As UK cinemas reopened after Covid-19 lockdowns, Cinema First wanted to launch #LoveCinema, a nationwide campaign reminding audiences of the big-screen experience. Working with MediaCom, they needed to prove that a premium Connected TV (CTV) strategy could reach audiences who hadn't already been exposed to their ads via BVOD, YouTube, and other streaming channels — rather than just duplicating reach across platforms.
Results
The CTV campaign drove a 100% increase in incremental reach over BVOD and other streaming — reaching 588k additional people — with an 87% video completion rate and a cost per completed view of just £0.03, at an average of three impressions per person. The results proved CTV/AVOD platforms can meaningfully extend reach beyond BVOD, prompting Cinema First to plan a follow-up AVOD campaign measuring incremental reach over linear TV.
Key Product
BRANDBEAT, REACHBEAT, FOOTFALLBEAT
About Cinema First
Cinema First is the UK's joint industry body promoting the theatrical cinema experience. Founded by the UK Cinema Association (UKCA) and the Film Distributors' Association (FDA), it operates as a non-profit company limited by guarantee and leads nationwide initiatives such as National Cinema Day to drive audiences to the big screen.
As cinemas began to reopen after months of Covid-19 lockdown, Cinema First — the industry body charged with promoting UK cinema-going — wanted to launch #LoveCinema, a nationwide campaign designed to remind audiences across the country of the unique experience that only the big screen can offer.
Cinema First worked with their media agency, MediaCom, to design a digital strategy that would drive higher video engagement in premium content environments. The media would be activated on popular platforms across audience interests relating to film, TV, and streaming content in order to drive awareness while ensuring the ads were reaching relevant audiences.
Reaching New Audiences With Connected TV (CTV)
The teams at MediaCom and The Trade Desk collaborated on a strategy that focused on premium Connected TV (CTV) content. Ad-funded over-the-top (OTT) platforms allowed Cinema First to contextually target Hollywood movie titles and channels that indexed highly for film and entertainment fans. This CTV approach also complemented Cinema First’s other streaming strategies, including broadcast video-on-demand (BVOD).
Another goal was to demonstrate the incremental reach of CTV. Cinema First did this by partnering with Beatgrid, a measurement platform that monitors cross-media audiences at scale. This helped the company prove their CTV campaigns were reaching audiences who hadn’t yet been exposed to their ads via BVOD and other streaming channels, such as YouTube.
Identifying High-Value Audiences And Premium Publishers
MediaCom and The Trade Desk — along with our OTT platform partners — were able to create a robust campaign strategy that targeted Cinema First’s desired audience segments:
- 16- to 24-year-old film and entertainment fans.
- 25- to 34-year-old film and entertainment fans.
- Families with parents over 35 years old.
MediaCom chose Rakuten, Roku, Samsung TV Plus, and Pluto as their OTT publishers for the campaign. It was agreed that the ads would only run on CTV devices, and budgets would be kept fluid to ensure flexibility.
Both our team at Beatgrid and The Trade Desk worked together to upload the ad-based video creative into our cross-media analytics platform.
This allowed Beatgrid’s automatic content recognition technology to measure reach and incrementality calculated via their mobile panel and normalized using national statistics data to ensure a representative data set.
As the campaign objective was to raise awareness, Cinema First chose to optimize towards consideration metrics, such as video completion rate (VCR) and cost per completed view (CPCV). Post-campaign, the most important KPI was incremental reach gained from the campaign’s other video channels, including BVOD.
Through our platform, the MediaCom team was able to quickly and efficiently prioritize ad spend towards the best performing OTT providers.
Doubling Incremental Reach Over BVOD And Other Streaming
Careful planning, configuration, and optimisation all contributed to making the campaign a resounding success.
- 100% increase in incremental reach via CTV (588k people).
- 87% VCR.
- £0.03 CPCV.
- Three impressions per person on average throughout the campaign.
Most impressive were the incremental reach results. Beatgrid and The Trade Desk were able to demonstrate how OTT ad-funded video on demand (AVOD) platforms can significantly extend audience reach beyond BVOD. As a next step, the teams are planning to run an AVOD campaign with Beatgrid to measure incremental reach over linear TV.
