CBS shared the honor with Simulmedia for our role in the campaign.

In the weeks leading to the Hawaii Five-O premiere, Simulmedia collaborated with CBSb marketing team to find the best audience to see promotional spots.B Using the a⁷ Platformb” to comb viewing patterns contained in our 16MM+ set-top box sample, we found the viewers who were the most receptive to programming similar to Hawaii Five-O, who were available to watch television on Mondays at 10PM when the Hawaii Five-O premiere was to air, and who had not demonstrated loyalty to programming airing on competing broadcast and cable networks.B Once we identified the target audience, we worked with our inventory partner to assemble an inventory package that reached the part of the target audience that had not been exposed to CBSb national television advertising schedule.

While the specifics of the campaign are confidential, we can say that Simulmediabs packaged inventory delivered incremental reach to the Hawaii Five-O target audience cost effectively and at scale.B Also, in line with results of the other 50+ campaigns webve executed, we can say that the target audience responded to CBSb promotional spots by tuning in to the Hawaii Five-O premiere at significantly higher rates.

The award validates our effort to bring the benefits of audience targeted advertising to television, today.

In a small and growing company with ambitions like Simulmedia, everyone we hire will impact the trajectory of our business and have the opportunity to bring positive change to the television media ecosystem.

Today, webre seeking applicants for several important positions.

Director, Attention Operations – As the Director, Attention Operations, you would be working on every aspect of Simulmediabs media and client service areas. B We are looking for someone to recruit, train and lead a team of media and client service professionals. You may come from an agency background or perhaps pricing and planning at a media company.B You should have a strong background in media functions. You should be comfortable with all phases of Spot TV Advertising, from research, to planning and buying, to trafficking systems, through to reporting, reconciliation, and billing.

Director, Product Marketing – The Simulmedia a⁷ Platformb” enables us to transform massive volumes of set-top box and other data into predictive insight to the effectiveness of television program promotion.B As Director, Product Marketing, you would be responsible for the launch of products that put the value of our insight into the hands of our television network customers and system operator partners.B You should be an expert on the interests and motivations of television network marketers and programmers and how they make decisions.

Attention Analyst b Simulmedia brings data-driven decision making to the art of television program promotion.B As an Attention Analyst, you would be responsible for the research required by product management, data strategy, operations, and our clients. B Media or TV experience not necessary; you may have come from Wall Street, web analytics, or even straight out of college. The experience we value is your having handled multiple projects at once and making sure deadlines are met.

Webre also seeking a Software Developer Intern for this summer.B B Over the course of the internship, you would support our Attention Operations and Attention Science teams, querying set-top-box data to advance analysis and model development.

If youbre interested in any of these positions, have a look at the complete job description on our Careers page and send your resume with a cover letter and salary history to careers@simulmedia.com.

Simulmedia is an Equal Opportunity Employer.B We offer competitive salary, benefits, vacation, stock options and a stake in our companybs success.

Targeting low loyalty high attentiveness viewers is an ideal way to drive ratings for established programs. We define low loyalty viewers as ones that watch only one episode of a program in a season. As we previously determined, most shows have large numbers of such low loyalty viewers and their attention is for sale. Imposing the additional requirement of bhigh attentiveness,b we ensure that our target is more receptive to a particular program.

Our recent study examined whether exposure to promotion makes the highly attentive low loyalty segments more likely to tune in to subsequent episodes of a program.

We isolated high attentiveness low loyalty February 2009 audiences for ABCbs Lost and FOXbs 24.B Any viewer who saw at least thirty non-consecutive minutes of Lost on exactly one out of four possible occasions in February was included in the high attentiveness low loyalty audience for Lost. The same criteria were used to create a high attentiveness low loyalty audience for FOXbs 24.

Subsequently, we split the February high attentiveness low loyalty audience into two segments based on their exposure to promotion in the first week of March, prior to the first March episode. We then examined first March episode tune in of the promo-exposed and promo-unexposed highly attentive low-loyalty viewers and compared their rates. The results for both programs have confirmed our hypothesis that promotional exposure moves highly attentive-low loyalty viewers to tune in at higher rates.

Additionally, the graphs below illustrate that the high attentiveness low loyalty audience is a more effective target of promotion than the general set-top box audience. In fact, the high attentiveness low loyalty audience exposed to promotion is more than three times as likely to tune in to the program as the exposed general audience.

In our future analysis we plan to investigate whether exposure to promotion made the low loyalty viewers more loyal, and determine the persistence of the effect.

In less than a month, the broadcast networks will roll out their new shows for Fall 2009 season.B Among them are NBCbs Mercy, ABCbs Flash Forward, CBSbs The Good Wife, FOXbs Glee, and the CWbs Melrose Place.B With new shows comes the barrage of promotion, via television, radio, online ads, outdoor billboards, and within magazines/newspapers.B B Resistance is futile.B Thou shall not escape the networksb attempts to help you blearnb about these new shows.B B Or maybe, just maybe, thou have.

Earlier this year, Accenture released its Global Broadcast Consumer Survey titled bTelevision: Entering the Era of Mass Fragmentationb.B B The report highlights the ways in which consumers learn about new television content.B Of those polled, ads/promos garnered the highest response representing 40% of the group, followed by channel surfing (33%), and friends/family (30%).B More recent methods such as blogs, web content stores, mobile ads, and DVR/PVR recommendations were towards the end of the pack with 8%, 6%, 5%, and 2% respectively.B

In view of this Accenturebs survey results, it would seem that networks canbt afford to not reach all potential television viewers when it comes to on-air promotion.B B That is, however, exactly what is happening.B

Note: Data from TNS Media Researchbs Charter LA.B Time period: 2008-2009 episodes of the showbs most recently completed season.

B The table shows that less than half of potential viewers have been reached with an on-air promotion for any networkbs new program.B These numbers will improve as the season approaches and finally begins, but as the following chart shows, even last season there was still a large population of viewers that had not seen a single promotion.

Note: Data from TNS Media Researchbs Charter LA.B Time period: 2008-2009 episodes of the showbs most recently completed season.

Marketers are not reaching a large portion of the television viewing audience.B That a sizeable percentage of the potential audience does not see a promotion creates a downward spiral.B If you donbt see a promotion, chances are you wonbt know about the program.B If you donbt know about the program, then you canbt watch it.B And if you donbt watch it, then ratings might decrease.B

The solution to this problem is simple.B Networks must increase their promotional reach prior to program launch and maintain it during the program season.B

A conversation from The Sandlot (1993) humorously illustrates the point of this issue, showing that people canbt consume something they know nothing about. B

Ham Porter: Hey, Smalls, you wanna s’more?

Smalls: Some more of what?

Ham Porter: No, do you wanna s’more?

Smalls: I haven’t had anything yet, so how can I have some more of nothing?

Recently, we ran a series of tests to evaluate how well on-air program promotions do at actually driving viewers to watch specific television shows. We analyzed anonymous set-top-box data through TNS’s Infosys Media System. The results we found were pretty enlightening, so I thought that I would share some of them with you today. Below are findings related to viewer responsiveness to on-air promos for NBC’s “Parks and Recreation” from this past spring, which were quite representative for the dozens of shows that we have looked at:

On-air promos work.B This has been confirmed time and again in viewer surveys and attitudinal studies, and set-top-box data confirms it as well. Folks that saw on-air promos for “Parks and Recreation” were 15.9 times more likely to watch the show than folks that didn’t see the promos. Yes. 15.9X.

No promo, no viewing.B People that didn’t see any on-air promos for “Parks and Recreation” didn’t watch the show. 0.17% is the percentage of folks that watched the show but hadn’t seen a promo. We saw similar numbers for virtually every show we analyzed. This means that if a viewer doesn’t see an on-air promo for a show, you can be 99% certain that he isn’t going to watch the show. Yes. Not only do promos work, but the reverse is true as well.

Viewers of a feather flock together.B People who shared similar viewing patterns with those who liked “ParksB and Recreation” were twice as likely to view the show as the viewing population generally. Yes. That meant that the 15.9X lift relative to unexposed went to almost 32X.

What are the implications of these findings? It’s seems that on-air promotion is an enormously critical component in driving viewership to shows, much more so than I had originally thought. Further, it is also pretty clear that different viewers respond quite differently to different promos — thus, lots of opportunities for optimization. What do you think?

(This post originally ran on MediaPostbs Online Spin on July 2nd, 2009.)

Promax|BDA is an industry group representing marketing, promotion and design professionals in the entertainment industry.B Its conference is an opportunity for the creative designers and producers to celebrate their accomplishments and catch the eye of network marketers planning their campaigns for the Fall programming season.B For Simulmedia, the conference was a chance to appreciate the craft of program promotion and immerse ourselves in promotional marketing culture.

At a panel discussion on Day 3 of the conference, bPromotions in the Multi-Media Market – Where to Put Your Moneyb, Mary Ann Farrell, SVP Research at E-Poll Market Research, presented a study of television viewers, their viewing habits and their attitudes toward promotional marketing.B E-Poll based its study on analysis of a nationwide online survey of a representative sample of 1,644 individuals aged 13-54, fielded May 21-26, 2009.

The E-Poll study featured several findings relevant to Simulmediabs focus.

	Fewer than2 in 10 consumers are bvery interestedb in finding out about new programs.B This is evidence of televisionbs bdiscovery problemb.B Perceiving too many programming options and too little time to discover and sample them, many viewers report a disinclination to seek new programs.
	Viewers with digital video recorders are more interested in finding out about new programs than their non-DVR-using peers and have higher rates of promo recall.B As DVR penetration increases, promotional messaging becomes a better use for television advertising inventory.
	Television is the primary source of new program awareness.B 94% of respondents said on-air promotions created the best source of recall.B Television is the most impactful media channel for conveying new program information.
	The perception of promotional ads on TV is more favorable than on other media channels.B 40% of respondents said that a TV promotion had caught their attention.B 7% of respondents reported finding TV promotions annoying.B Compare that to the internetbs 20% attention catching rate and 20% annoying rate.

Taken together, these findings are a compelling endorsement of Simulmediabs goal to deliver television viewership through data-driven program promotion.

Simulmediabs mission is to deliver television viewership.B We believe that new audiences can be reached and new viewers delivered by selectively swapping promotional spots across networks, thereby reaching audiences that might like the program but would not otherwise know about it.

An example illustrates this idea.B The charts below show on-channel promotion frequency versus the percent cumulative audience reached by promotions for two programs, bMANswersb on Spike and bThe Sarah Silverman Programb on Comedy Central, from October through December 2008.B The curves have a logarithmic as opposed to straight-line or exponential shape, indicating the diminishing marginal return of each successive promotion.

The graphs demonstrate that valuable commercial spots are being used on promotions that people have already seen.B

A solution would be to swap spots for these shows across the two networks.B We performed a hypothetical one-to-one swap of 16 saturated prime-time spots between MANswers and Sarah Silverman.B We saw that doing so greatly increased the number of new viewers exposed to both promotions, since cross-channel viewers were much less likely to have been previously exposed.

The subset of viewers seeing the swapped spots who have compatible genre preferences and are available to view the promoted program will tune-in and improve the ratings for both networks.

One point to investigate further is the relationship between response rates to a promotion and the number of times that a viewer has seen the promotion.B Perhaps a promotion only becomes bwastefulb or ineffective after a viewer has seen it, say, five times in a given week.B This issue warrants further study.

Channel surfing is essential to the television viewing experience, especially as the number of channels and the volume of programming on television explodes.B Following from the explosion of television content, viewers’ ability to discover new programs is impaired and their estimation of the opportunity costs of choosing a program is increased.

At Simulmedia, we think that certain viewers will spend less time surfing if they were better informed of program content and schedules.B We also think that, through segmenting viewers by their surfing habits, we might better identify the viewers that will surf less and tune in more after exposure to the right program promotions. B Scheduling promotions in spots that index highly for viewers likely to enter favorable surfing modes will encourage their substituting viewing time for surfing time and increase the ratings of the programs they choose.

To investigate surfing behavior further we tapped into data from Twitter, where dozens of people announce to the world that they are channel surfing every day.B Unlike traditional ratings or second-by-second set-top-box information, Twitter has rich qualitative information that reveals motivations behind viewers’ surfing.

A semantic analysis of the data revealed that the tweets could be clustered into 8 distinct channel surfing modes. Each of these modes represents a different state-of-mind, which in turn could correspond to receptivity to program promotion. The modes are listed below:

1. Anticipation - composed of people who tweeted about surfing as they waited for a program to start. For example, “channelB surfingB waiting until 3pm when ellen comes on!“.

2. Searching – composed of people who indicated that they were searching for something to watch. For example “ChannelB surfingB . looking for some good cable tv“.

3. Multi-tasking – composed of people who were doing other things besides surfing and twittering. For example “ChannelB surfingB and reading Roenick’s latest comments on how he thinks Babcock hates Cheli..“.

4. Split-attention - composed of people who distribute their attention between several programs at once. For example “ChannelB surfingB between Idol and Lakers“.

5. About to sleep - composed of people who are just biding time by channel surfing before they fall asleep. For example “channelB surfing, probably til I fall asleep.”.

6. Relaxing - composed of people who have indicated that they were in a relaxed state of mind and were channel surfing. For example “Plans fell through so chillaxing nB channelB surfing“.B

7. Bored & Awake - composed of insomniacs who are bored, and are surfing in the hope they fall asleep soon. For example “ChannelB surfingB because I can’t sleep…..”

8. Converts - composed of people who found something to watch while surfing. For example, “ChannelB surfingB and found last 15 mins of Penn State trouncing Stanford in the Championship game in women’s college#rugbyB on ESPNU“.

We’d expect viewers in different modes to respond differently to program promotion.B Of the eight surfing modes, Anticipation and Split-attention are likely the most difficult to sway with promotions.B Viewers in Anticipation mode surf to kill time before a scheduled program.B Viewers in the Split-attention mode are watching multiple channels at the same time.

On the other end of the discovery spectrum, we’d expect viewers in the Searching and Converting mode, roughly 30% of classified tweets, to be most likely to change their surfing time to watching time.B Directing promotions to viewers who are in Searching and Converting modes presents a untapped opportunity to increase ratings and also provide better media choices to these viewers.

Loyalty varies significantly across shows.B FOX’s American Idol has the most loyal audience in the sample, with 65% of viewers watching at least two episodes this season.B On the other end of the spectrum, just 26% of Rescue Me (FX) viewers watched at least two episodes of the show.B The average Loyalty Score in the sample was 46%, indicating that fewer half of viewers watched a given show more than once.

In other words, even for a show like American Idol with a perceived loyal and devoted following, over a third of the rating on a given night is driven by viewers who will not return for any additional episodes.B For less popular shows, the phenomenon is even more extreme.B Three-quarters of Rescue Me viewers, and two-thirds of Mad Men (AMC) viewers, watched exactly one episode this season.B As indicated in the previous loyalty post, these one-time viewers have attention that is “for sale” and are ideal targets of promotion.

B

Data from TNS Media Research’s InfoSysTV.B Time period: First episode of the show’s current season (or most recent season if the show is not running currently) through February 2009, except for Rescue Me, where time period is the first five episodes of the season that started in April 2009.B Reruns are not factored into the analysis.