VoDio – moving VoD from a “nice to have” addition to TV to a fully accountable medium

Universal McCann London’s Claire Sowerby and Cate Connolly say the current VoD market provides the ideal opportunity for advertisers to innovate and differentiate…

With nearly a third of internet-equipped households tuning in, video on demand (VoD) has become a mainstream media channel. VoD offers brands a tangible opportunity to communicate with a whole spectrum of target groups. And as new players like Google TV enter the market and greater back catalogues of programming are made available online, content consumption via VoD platforms looks set to grow and grow.

Consumers themselves are also changing their demands and moving away from more traditional TV platforms. Sky+ may not have brought about the full scale destruction of the TV industry that was initially predicted, but it has put consumers in control – a place they now expect to be. And the massive marketing push by BBC iPlayer has taught us what on-demand really can offer. Both have redefined consumer expectations as they seek out the content they want to watch.

Many forces will shape the future of video on demand, the iPad and other similar devices will almost certainly elevate the portable VoD viewing experience to a whole new level. The challenge for us is how best to integrate VoD into the communications planning mix in order to maximise its potential for advertisers. In the post recession era of accountability, clients are increasingly looking for strong rationales behind media recommendations. Advertisers have posed some big questions, including: how much additional reach will using video on demand achieve? And what is the most cost efficient way to use VoD to reach my audience?

Here at UM Research & Insight it was important for us to quickly develop an accurate way of answering these questions. The current VoD market provides the ideal opportunity for advertisers to innovate and differentiate, if agencies can provide the reassurance they need to justify their investment. In order to do this, we created VoDio – VoD investment optimiser.

The Research

To build the tool, UM commissioned a large-scale quantitative study. We interviewed 1,000 of our Curiosity Panel – which consists of 10,000 adults – about their usage and attitudes towards the technology. We then asked them to record their consumption of VoD over a two week period via a time diary.

Putting it into practice

By applying some smart modelling techniques to our time diary study we were able to create VoDio – a bespoke planning tool for VoD campaigns for UM’s investment teams. VoDio is easy to use and fully interactive. As a dynamic tool it allows us to answer real life planning questions by calculating how VoD reach and frequency builds for a variety of audiences by player, by genre and by programme.

VoDio can also be used in conjunction with Matrix – our multi-media optimisation tool. When the two systems are combined we can interrogate what exactly a VoD campaign delivers on top of a standard TV lay down, or any other media plan for that matter. In addition, VoDio gives us efficiency levels, dependent on audience and the effective weight of both linear TV and VoD investment levels.

From a planning perspective, VoDio allows us to tackle previously difficult questions on the role of VOD with confidence. And when it comes to investment decisions, VoDio helps to move VoD from a “nice to have” addition to our TV campaigns to a fully accountable medium in its own right.

Claire and Cate will be speaking at this year’s MRG conference in Malta from 3rd to 6th November. Click here for more information or to book your ticket.