1A C U S TO M A N A LY S I S C O M M I S S I O N E D B Y FA C E B O O K Copyright © 2013 The Nielsen Company
R U N N I N G D I G I TA L A U D I E N C E S, WA L K I N G A D V E R T I S I N G D O L L A R S THE UNTAPPED REACH OPPORTUNITY IN DIGITAL MEDIA
A CUSTOM ANALYSIS COMMISSIONED BY FACEBOOK JULY 2013
2 A C U S TO M A N A LY S I S C O M M I S S I O N E D B Y FA C E B O O K
E X E C U T I V E S U M M A R YWe are still in the early days of multi-platform advertising.
But preconceptions have already developed about the “best way” to leverage certain media to achieve your marketing
objectives. Specifically, industry consensus is that TV remains the “reach medium,” with its ability to attract large
assemblages of viewers across demos, particularly for the largest networks and during the prime time daypart.
Meanwhile, online is viewed as a medium by which marketers can reach more specific audiences and drive incremental
reach (e.g., light TV viewers).
Continued rapid Internet penetration globally and an explosion in the popularity of social networks and apps
challenges this view. Facebook, with more than 1 billion users globally, is a good example of this evolution.
Facebook’s user base results in a potential to drive massive reach, either duplicative or incremental to reach achieved
on TV. Have we reached a new paradigm in terms of the role of online in driving reach for advertising campaigns?
While marketers should also consider additional metrics, such as frequency and time spent, and measure their
advertising across the 3R framework—Reach, Resonance, and Reaction—to truly understand advertising performance
and optimization opportunities, this paper focuses on marketers’ reach objectives. Specifically, this Facebook-
commissioned study investigates this phenomenon by comparing Facebook’s total site reach to that of large TV
networks, and establishes heuristics for optimizing reach delivery on a large CPG company’s multi-platform campaign.
Through this approach, we address a number of fundamental questions:
1. How does Facebook’s site reach compare to that of TV networks? To what degree do their respective
audiences overlap?
2. How does this reach differ for different demographics and across different dayparts?
3. What is the optimal way to allocate campaign spend between TV and online (Facebook) to drive better reach
performance?
We find that Facebook is capable of delivering site reach at levels comparable to major TV networks, particularly for
certain dayparts and demos. By examining a model optimizing a campaign for maximum on-target audience reach
across media channels, we observe that Facebook continues to provide incremental reach with a large portion of
campaign allocation.
Overall, this paper shows that digital publishers with large, robust sets of high quality user data (like Facebook) can in
fact serve as an effective foundation for reach delivery. By investing in the online media channel, brand marketers can
increase their audience reach while at the same time creating an opportunity for dual screen media exposure. This is
all possible within the original campaign budget.
3A C U S TO M A N A LY S I S C O M M I S S I O N E D B Y FA C E B O O K Copyright © 2013 The Nielsen Company
Not all people buy all products. Generally speaking, the purchasers of a given product
tend to skew toward a particular set of demographic and psychographic profiles.
For instance, parents are more likely to buy diapers and men are more likely to buy
shaving cream. Marketers spend a lot of time thinking about the optimal ‘audience’
for their advertising campaigns. Once that audience is selected, the question is how
best to deliver media to it. It follows that marketers would then demand campaign
reporting metrics that measure the efficacy of a given campaign at reaching its intended
audience.
Television advertising is the most well-established medium for marketing, capturing the
largest portion of spend in an estimated $495 billion worldwide advertising industry.
Total TV ad spend in the United States (US) rose to $76.5 billion in 2012, up from
$71.8 billion in 2011 – another year of growth1. The television advertising industry has
adopted Gross Ratings Points (GRPs) achieved within particular age and gender groups
as measured by Nielsen as the industry standard ad metric in the US. GRPs simply
equal the percentage of the intended audience the ad campaign reached multiplied by
the average frequency each person within the group saw the ad*. In short, TV media
plans are generally optimized to achieve maximum GRPs within a particular age and
gender grouping and a set time interval. In the book “When Ads Work: New Proof that
Advertising Triggers Sales,” John Philip Jones summarizes the key goals that define the
way educated brand marketers thought, and most continue to think, about success in
television marketing:
1. Aim to cover a substantial proportion of the brand’s target group once every
week with as a little duplication as possible. “Substantial proportion” is a
judgment call based on the size of the brand, its target group, and knowledge
of the effectiveness of defined levels of reach achieved in the past.
2. To attain this minimum reach, determine the optimum number of weekly
gross rating points (GRPs) and establish the best types of dayparts and
television programs to use in order to minimize audience duplication…
3. Run the weekly advertising pattern for as many weeks as the budget will allow.
Any inevitable gaps in the schedule should occur during the low season.
CHALLENGES AND ADVANCEMENTS IN THE ONLINE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY
*For example, if an ad
campaign is aimed at Males 18-
24 and it reached 30 percent of
all Males 18-24 with an average
frequency of 1 ad per person,
the campaign would have
achieved 30 GRPs. Similarly,
if the same ad campaign had
reached 20 percent of all
Males 18-24 with an average
frequency of 2 ads per person,
the campaign would have
achieved 40 GRPs.
Source: 1.Nielsen Global AdView Pulse Report, Q4 2012.
4 A C U S TO M A N A LY S I S C O M M I S S I O N E D B Y FA C E B O O K
The reality is the pie is growing in terms of media consumption. TV still leads
in terms of time spent, with the average US TV viewer watching 156 hours of TV
per month, the average PC owner spending 29 hours online, and the average
smartphone user spending 24 hours on apps and web each month2. The
number of computer Internet users has grown from 156 million in 2007 to 212
million in 2012 and smartphone penetration has increased from 7 percent in
2007 to 59 percent in 20123. Additionally, the number of households that do
not receive TV programming via a traditional platform has more than doubled
in the last six years, growing from 2 million in 2007 to 5 million 20134.
The first step for marketers who are heavily invested in TV advertising in
determining how to allocate spend more effectively across media channels
is the ability to measure campaigns in a comparable way across all these
channels. This is more difficult than it may otherwise seem because digital
advertising has widely adopted a set of divergent campaign measurement
metrics from that of TV as the media channel norms – namely impression
counts and click-through-rate. Nielsen has developed two products, Nielsen
Online Campaign Ratings™ and Nielsen Cross-Platform Campaign Ratings™,
which aim to fill this demand for cross-media channel campaign measurement.
Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings measures digital campaigns using GRPs in a
way that is directly comparable to that of TV. Nielsen Cross-Platform Campaign
Ratings measures campaigns that are running on TV and online within one,
GRP-based report.
In short, though the tools are now available, many marketers are still left trying
to create integrated campaigns without proper vision into performance within
and across platforms. A major underlying issue preventing the advertising
industry from keeping pace with this audience migration to digital consumption
had been the lack of uniform measurement.
Sources: 2.Q4 2012 Nielsen Cross-Platform Report, December 2012 Nielsen Smartphone Analytics. 3.Q4 2007 and Q4 2012 Nielsen Cross-Platform
Report, Q4 2007 and Q4 2012 Nielsen Mobile Insights. 4.Q4 2012 Nielsen Cross-Platform Report.
5A C U S TO M A N A LY S I S C O M M I S S I O N E D B Y FA C E B O O K Copyright © 2013 The Nielsen Company
UNDERSTANDING ONLINE AND TV REACH A CASE STUDY
To further illustrate and understand the distribution of media audiences on
television and online, we conducted an in-depth analysis of potential audience
reach using Nielsen’s US TV/Internet Data Fusion panel which represents
the total US population of TV and PC users. In this analysis, we looked at
the reach for four television networks within specific age and gender groups
at different times during the day. We then compared that with the reach of
the Facebook PC digital network, as a percent of the total population during
the same times of the day. It is important to note that time spent metrics
and mobile media consumption were not included in the daypart analyses
contained in Figure 1.A and Figure 1.B. Figure 1.C uses Nielsen’s TV/Internet/
Mobile Data Fusion panel to measure differences in reach between Facebook
(PC + Mobile) and TV networks looking at a full month of data.
0
25
50
75
100
19%
50%
55%52%
42%
46%46%
36%
47%
30%
56% 56%58%
42%
47%
17%15%
15%15%
21%19%
20%20%
29%26%
25%25%
34%32%
28%31%
40%39%
33%
40%
P12-17 P18-24 P35-44 P45-54 P55-64 P65+P25-34
Network 2Network 1 Network 4Network 3Facebook
FIGURE 1.A5
POPULATION REACH BY AGE - DAYTIME WEEKDAYS
Source: 5.Figure 1.A: Nielsen TV/Internet Data Fusion, October 2012.
6 A C U S TO M A N A LY S I S C O M M I S S I O N E D B Y FA C E B O O K
0.0
62.5
125.0
187.5
250.0
62% 56%70%
56% 55%61% 59%
FBMobile
FBOnline
Network 1 Network 2 Network 3 Network 4FB OnlineOR
Mobile
0.0
62.5
125.0
187.5
250.0
54%61%
73%83% 82% 83% 84%
FBMobile
FBOnline
FB OnlineOR
Mobile
Network 1 Network 2 Network 3 Network 4
0.0
62.5
125.0
187.5
250.0
64% 64%77% 74% 71% 75% 73%
FBMobile
FBOnline
FB OnlineOR
Mobile
Network 1 Network 2 Network 3 Network 4
0.0
62.5
125.0
187.5
250.0
30%44%
52%
89% 88% 86% 91%
FBMobile
FBOnline
FB OnlineOR
Mobile
Network 1 Network 2 Network 3 Network 4
PERSONS 18–24
PERSONS 35–54
PERSONS 25–34
PERSONS 55+
FIGURE 1.B6
FIGURE 1.C7
POPULATION REACH BY AGE - PRIMETIME
POPULATION REACH BY AGE - TOTAL DAY
Sources: 6.Figure 1.B: Nielsen TV/Internet Data Fusion, October 2012. 7.Figure 1.C: Nielsen TV/Internet/Mobile Data Fusion, January 2013.
0
25
50
75
100
25%
50% 51%
62%
55%
61%
48%
69%
74%72%
70%
74%
36%
77%75%
72%
78%
22%
77%79%
72%
81%
44%
63%65%
64%
53%
37%
43%
38%42%
47%
40%
46%
41%
P12-17 P18-24 P35-44 P45-54 P55-64 P65+P25-34
Network 2Network 1 Network 4Network 3Facebook
7A C U S TO M A N A LY S I S C O M M I S S I O N E D B Y FA C E B O O K Copyright © 2013 The Nielsen Company
These data point to a few interesting conclusions specifically around reach:
1. TV is more effective at reaching all audience segments during primetime hours
when compared with daytime hours.
2. Facebook exhibits relatively consistent reach across both daytime
and primetime dayparts.
3. During the weekday daytime hours, Facebook achieves a higher reach than the TV
networks for every age cohort containing persons younger than 55, while during
primetime hours, each of the four TV networks achieves a higher reach than
Facebook in each age cohort except for ‘Persons 18-24’.
4. Mobile can also offer incremental reach for both online and TV, and is another
way for fully integrated plans to achieve highest reach results.
MEASURING MULTI-PLATFORM ADVERTISING SUCCESSINCREMENTAL AND CROSS-MEDIA REACH
With near-universal market adoption, it is safe to say that television is a mature
advertising ecosystem. To optimize spend, brand marketers can find value in
emerging digital channels that can complement TV. The success with which online
advertising can optimize reach within an advertising plan can be measured in
two ways:
1. Incremental Reach: the marginal, extended reach within the desired audience
segment the campaign achieves as a result of the online component, i.e. the
portion of the audience reached only on the digital platform.
2. Cross-media Reach: the portion of the audience for whom the campaign’s
message was reinforced via impressions being viewed both online and on TV, i.e.
the portion of the audience reached on both TV and a digital platform. Nielsen
has shown that cross-media reach is more effective in driving resonance than
reach through a single media channel8.
Source: 8.Nielsen IAB Online Video Study, 2012.
8 A C U S TO M A N A LY S I S C O M M I S S I O N E D B Y FA C E B O O K
In this section of the paper we attempt to explicitly measure incremental and
cross-media reach within particular demographic groups and dayparts. We do
this at a macro level by comparing the audience reach estimates of both the
TV and Facebook (PC only) platforms as a whole using the Nielsen TV/Internet
Data Fusion panel. We then perform a similar analysis at the micro level by
taking an actual television ad campaign and executing a simulated exercise
of reallocating portions of TV media spend into online spend to measure the
resulting impact on reach that could be achieved by the campaign.
We start our analysis of incremental and cross-media reach at the macro level
by measuring the incremental and cross-media reach within demographic
groups9 and dayparts. We look at top TV networks as well as the PC-only
Facebook platform. The data is analyzed in an “only-only-both” method (TV-
only, digital-only and duplicated reach across platforms) to demonstrate the
incremental reach digital o�ers, as well as the ability of digital to drive deeper
engagement with audiences via cross-media reach.
MACRO ANALYSIS: UNDERSTANDING REACH ACROSS FACEBOOK AND TV
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
Network 1 Network 2 Network 3 Network 4
14%15% 15% 15%
5%4% 4% 4%
13% 11% 11% 11%
Network-Only Reach
Duplicated Reach
Facebook-Only Reach
Network-Only Reach
Duplicated Reach
Facebook-Only Reach
0369
1215182124273033363942454851545760
11%13%
13%13%
14%12%
13%12%
33% 28%33%
29%
Network 1 Network 2 Network 3 Network 4
DAY TIME
FIGURE 2.APRIME TIME
Source: 9.Data not shown for all demos. Figures 2.A-2.D: Nielsen TV/Internet Data Fusion, October 2012.
9A C U S TO M A N A LY S I S C O M M I S S I O N E D B Y FA C E B O O K Copyright © 2013 The Nielsen Company
Network-Only Reach
Duplicated Reach
Facebook-Only Reach
0369
1215182124273033363942454851545760
38% 38% 38% 38%
14% 12% 13% 12%
33% 28% 33% 29%
Network 1 Network 2 Network 3 Network 4
Network-Only Reach
Duplicated Reach
Facebook-Only Reach
048
121620242832364044485256606468727680
37% 39% 41% 41%
18% 16% 14% 15%
11% 10% 11% 10%
Network 1 Network 2 Network 3 Network 4
Network-Only Reach
Duplicated Reach
Facebook-Only Reach
048
121620242832364044485256606468727680
22% 22%27%
23%
21% 20%15%
20%
26% 25% 21% 27%
Network 1 Network 2 Network 3 Network 4
Network-Only Reach
Duplicated Reach
Facebook-Only Reach
048
121620242832364044485256606468727680
25%28%
24%27%
25%22%
26%23%
17% 14% 17% 15%
Network 1 Network 2 Network 3 Network 4
Network-Only Reach
Duplicated Reach
Facebook-Only Reach
048
121620242832364044485256606468727680
15%19%
17%20%
36%32%
35%31%
26% 22% 26% 22%
Network 1 Network 2 Network 3 Network 4
Network-Only Reach
Duplicated Reach
Facebook-Only Reach
05
101520253035404550556065707580859095
100
6% 7% 8%6%
31% 29% 28% 31%
47% 46% 44% 47%
Network 1 Network 2 Network 3 Network 4
DAY TIME
DAY TIME
DAY TIME
PRIME TIME
PRIME TIME
PRIME TIME
POPULATION REACH BY PLATFORM - PERSONS 18-24
POPULATION REACH BY PLATFORM - PERSONS 25-34
POPULATION REACH BY PLATFORM - PERSONS 55-64
FIGURE 2.B
FIGURE 2.C
FIGURE 2.D
10 A C U S TO M A N A LY S I S C O M M I S S I O N E D B Y FA C E B O O K
Generally speaking, we observe higher levels of Facebook-only reach
(incremental) during the daytime and higher levels of cross-media reach
between Facebook and TV in the primetime hours, which are results
consistent with our earlier analysis of daypart reach for each of the platforms.
This is most evident when looking at the younger age cohorts.
Some of the more striking results are within the 18-24 and 25-34 age groups.
Facebook adds significant incremental reach when looking at individual
networks for the daytime daypart and significant cross-media reach during
primetime for these age groups. During the day, the Facebook-only reach
addition to network audiences ranges from 37 percent to 41 percent. When
looking at these same demographic groups during primetime, the Facebook-
only reach ranges from 15 percent to 28 percent, while the cross-media reach
is much higher, ranging from 22 percent to 36 percent. This type of analysis
offers an exciting opportunity for brands to better achieve their campaign
reach goals. For brands aiming to extend reach, publishers should be
evaluated based on demographics and dayparts where they are able to offer
the highest unduplicated reach. Brands that are aiming to reinforce the
messaging through duplication can focus on publishers that offer significant
cross-media reach.
While these findings on reach are insightful in aggregate, marketers are still
faced with challenges, asking, “What is the optimal media mix between TV
and digital, and how do I measure the impact of this mix on reach?”
MICRO ANALYSIS: PLANNING FOR THE OPTIMAL ALLOCATION - A CPG CASE STUDY
This next section of the paper takes an actual television advertising media
plan through a simulated exercise of reallocating TV media spend into online
spend to measure the resulting impact on reach achieved by the campaign.
It is important to note that this analysis focuses only on reach and does not
measure other metrics, such as time spent, or the other pillars of the 3R
framework, resonance and reaction, which are all relevant for evaluating a
campaign’s success. To perform this exercise, we use the television-viewing
and Internet-browsing behavior from Nielsen TV/Internet Data Fusion.
‘Online’ in this analysis is defined by a set of 10 of the top publishers based
on historical campaign performance within the females 18-34 demo. Using
Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings data, the top publishers were determined
by how well they were able to reach the intended audience, in this case
females 18-34. As a second breakout, we have included Facebook in addition
to these 10 publishers.
11A C U S TO M A N A LY S I S C O M M I S S I O N E D B Y FA C E B O O K Copyright © 2013 The Nielsen Company
The initial insight is the increase in reach among Females 18-34. The campaign
started with a baseline reach of 66 percent of females ages 18-34. This reach
increases rapidly with a 5 percent shift in spend from TV to online, bumping
the reach up from 66 percent to 73 percent for total reach, excluding Facebook,
and to 76 percent for total reach, including Facebook. This incremental reach is
achieved with no additional spend on the part of the advertiser11. Reach continues
to grow with the additional shifts of media budget into online, but eventually at
diminishing rates. At a 40 percent shift to online excluding Facebook, the overall
reach of the campaign begins to decline.
There is also an underlying story in cross-media reach. While we observed a sharp
increase in total reach with the first 5 percent shift, we do not see a similar level
of decrease in TV reach. The baseline TV reach is 66 percent for the campaign,
and with the first shift this drops to 65 percent when combining the TV only reach
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
7%
28%66% 66%
38%
10%
33%
31%
12%
35%
28%
13%
37%
25%
15%
38%
23%
18%
38%
19%
11%
35%
30%
14%
41%
23%
16%
43%
20%
17%
44%
18%
19%
45%
16%
23%73%
66% 66%
74% 75% 75% 76% 75% 76%78% 79% 79% 80% 80%
44%
13%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 40% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 40%
TV Only ReachDuplicated ReachOnline Only Reach
Allocation of Online Excluding Facebook Allocation of Online Including Facebook
REA
CH
(%)
CPG BRAND MEDIA INVENTORY OPTIMIZATION - FEMALES 18-34
FIGURE 310
Sources: 10.Figure 3: Nielsen TV/Internet Data Fusion, August 2012. 11.Average CPMs for each of the publishers were used to calculate impressions that
could be allocated to online with the budget shifts.
12 A C U S TO M A N A LY S I S C O M M I S S I O N E D B Y FA C E B O O K
CONCLUSION
The proliferation of connected, digital media devices and options has
propelled an evolving media consumption landscape. The reality is advertising
budgets have not followed at the same rate. A large barrier preventing
higher growth of digital advertising spend has been the lack of a consistent
measurement framework between TV and other digital media channels with
which to judge the success or failure of allocation decisions. Consistent
metrics are crucial to compare performance, gauge success and justify spend
across multiple platforms.
Throughout this paper we looked at comparable reach metrics across
Facebook and TV networks to create a consistent measurement framework
that lends itself to multi-platform capability. Two overarching conclusions can
be made from this analysis:
1. Digital publishers with vast reach and high-quality demographic data,
such as Facebook, should be considered a viable option alongside
television when a marketer is pursuing an audience reach objective,
particularly for younger age cohorts.
2. Planning with particular attention to dayparts for both TV and online
presents exciting, synergistic opportunities for brands to increase in-
target reach and create an advantageous audience for dual screen
exposure, all while maintaining the same campaign budget.
and the duplicated reach, excluding Facebook, and remains at 66 percent
when combining the TV only reach and the duplicated reach, including
Facebook. Not only is the advertiser benefiting from extending reach, but
they are also adding a good amount of duplication across TV and online. This
overlapping audience can unlock a wealth of opportunity for an advertiser
to engage their key consumers multiple times, across media channels, to
reinforce their messaging.
This analysis shows in an applied example how a brand advertising on
TV can maintain the same overall budget, reallocate a portion of spend
into digital media, increase their reach among the intended audience, and
create an opportunity to reinforce the messaging with cross-media reach
across channels. In this CPG case study, with Facebook included, the brand
increased their in-target reach from 66 percent to 80 percent with roughly 44
percent of the audience having an opportunity to be exposed to messaging
on multiple channels.
13A C U S TO M A N A LY S I S C O M M I S S I O N E D B Y FA C E B O O K Copyright © 2013 The Nielsen Company
ABOUT NIELSEN Nielsen Holdings N.V. (NYSE: NLSN) is a global information and
measurement company with leading market positions in marketing
and consumer information, television and other media measurement,
online intelligence and mobile measurement. Nielsen has a presence in
approximately 100 countries, with headquarters in New York, USA and
Diemen, the Netherlands.
For more information, visit www.nielsen.com.
Copyright © 2013 The Nielsen Company. All rights reserved. Nielsen and
the Nielsen logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of CZT/ACN
Trademarks, L.L.C. Other product and service names are trademarks or
registered trademarks of their respective companies. 13/5455
As audiences continue to increase their digital media consumption, large
brand marketers that currently focus primarily on advertising within the TV
media channel should adopt consistent measurement frameworks and begin
allocating advertising dollars digitally to take advantage of incremental reach
opportunities – or risk being beaten to the punch by their competition.
14 A C U S TO M A N A LY S I S C O M M I S S I O N E D B Y FA C E B O O K