The Media Company and Media Buying Services (mbs) have launched a proprietary new television buying system called MaXis that is touted to be a major breakthrough in the optimization process, that of achieving specific reach and frequency goals at the lowest possible cost.
Existing optimizers – software products designed to make television buying more exact and effective – have been used in Europe for a number of years and have recently made their way into North America. These products essentially provide basic guidance for media buyers in assessing the optimum grps for daypart and program type.
The advantage of MaXis is that it allows buying based on reach and frequency, the same currency that is used in the media planning process. This permits the objectives and the outcome of a campaign to be compared ‘apples to apples’, effectively making the media buyer accountable to the client.
The MaXis optimization technology increases advertising effectiveness by comparing the unduplicated reach or audience of tens of thousands of possible program options and ranking them based on their cost per effective reach point.
This breakthrough software, developed by MediaCom Worldwide, the media subsidiary of Grey Advertising and partner with Toronto-based MBS in The Media Company, took two years and nearly $5 million to get to market in Canada. It has been installed in some markets in Europe but not in the u.s. as yet.
Peter Swain, chairman and ceo of The Media Company and mbs, explains that MaXis is customized for the Canadian market with an ongoing infusion of Respondent Level Audience Data collected via A.C. Nielsen’s People Meters, which provide viewing data for every minute of every day.
Swain says the system takes this data and develops a viewer profile for each and every program based on factors such the time slot’s past performance, competition and time period cumulative viewership.
The target audience for the campaign, chosen through separate analysis, is then matched to the viewer profile of the programs.
‘Common sense would tell us that if you hit the same viewer 16 times with an ad message, it’s probably a waste of money because they’ve either got the point, or they’ve tuned out,’ says Swain. ‘Hit the same customer maybe once and it might be a waste of money because they haven’t quite picked up the message yet.
‘Somewhere between those ranges – and they’re purely arbitrary numbers – there is a very powerful and optimum economic model, whether for an automobile or a soft drink; there’s a level that really has an effect – after that, it is really wasting your money.’
Swain says tmc/mbs has just completed a real test of MaXis for client Canada Trust with the results of increased effectiveness of audience reach ranging from 20% to 80%.
This success can also be attributed to the qualitative side of MaXis which measures television programs that intrinsically aid the recall of advertising in these programs, a feature based on research that shows the correlation between recall patterns and viewing patterns in the People Meter data.
‘While television is a very powerful tool, it has an inherent nuance that is probably best illustrated by the fact that if you take the 20% of Canadian viewers that watch the most television, they watch 10 times as much as the 20% of Canadians that watch the least,’ says Swain.
‘Therefore, a rating isn’t a rating, isn’t a rating… ‘
He believes that this technology will have an impact beyond the media buying side of the business, specifically on the creative and account planning roles.
‘We’re going to see creative having to be tested a lot more,’ predicts Swain.
‘Imagine the dynamic of having a piece of creative you only have to expose twice to a customer. Those are the sorts of economic issues that will come of this long term.’
