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Sky Media targets SMEs with AdSmart campaign

Sky Media targets SMEs with AdSmart campaign
The Media Plan

Sky Media is using AdSmart to advertise AdSmart.

The advertising sales arm of Sky has launched a campaign for its targeted TV platform to encourage small and medium-sized businesses to advertise on TV. What better way to do this, it was thought, that use AdSmart in the campaign itself to demonstrate how the platform can target relevant groups without a huge price tag.

AdSmart enables advertisers to target TV campaigns by postcode and other attributes, and has run more than 30,000 campaigns and claims to have achieved a 70% return rate of advertisers.

Sky Media used AdSmart’s first and third party attributes to create groups around specific regions, and overlaid business ownership data and select Experian mosaics to place the spots in front of its target audience of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and business owners.

The national campaign will run for three months and used 22 different versions of the ad with content like town names, regional accents and voiceovers adapted to where the ad was being shown.

David Sanderson, director of AdSmart local & development, told The Media Leader: “We know that relevance majorly increases ad attention and recall. It also allows us to showcase how AdSmart works using our own technology. We also know there is a 50% drop in channel switching when there is an AdSmart ad because of this relevance factor. For example, in Scotland we have three different VOs — adapting to whereabouts in Scotland the ad is being played. That regional VO on a national channel will achieve far greater stand-out proving the impact that AdSmart and TV can have.”

He highlighted that one of the perceived barriers for businesses to advertise on TV is the idea you have to spend a fortune to make an ad. With the AdSmart campaign, they kept the production budget purposely low, worked with a boutique production company (Horse’s Mouth Media) and went down an animated creative route to show TV ads do not need to be expensive or complicated.

“When businesses understand they can advertise to specific postcodes or households, alongside some of the world’s largest brands, without massive budgets, a lightbulb goes on,” Sanderson added. More and more SMEs are realising this and we’re seeing an average of two ‘new to TV’ businesses joining AdSmart every day. This campaign will help spread the AdSmart impact, affordability and accessibility word even further.”

The campaign will be measured in part through web visits and sales leads, but also in terms of longer-term brand strategy around AdSamrt.

Sanderson added: “We want AdSmart to be a known route to growth for SMEs, geographically focused and national niche brands. Businesses invest important finances into advertising, so offering something that’s high impact, affordable and measurable will be appealing to a wide variety of businesses.”


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