Mortgage Advice Bureau (MAB) is a nationwide network of over 1,200 mortgage brokers across the UK. They wanted to increase brand exposure and recognition, and consequently their customer base.
Due to the increased competitiveness and expense of digital channels, like PPC, they were keen to explore TV-related activity.
The key objectives were to:
When planning this activity, we wanted to explore programmatic and traditional TV advertising. The main difference between the two was targeting – with programmatic offering audience data targeting options, compared to traditional TV’s focus on targeting related programmes.
For this we used Sky Adsmart.
We worked with MAB to identify target locations, where their mortgage brokers are more densely located, and worked with Sky Adsmart to align this with their targeting capabilities.
Alongside this, we established which Experian Mosaic groups related most to MAB’s key audiences, namely:
In addition, we overlaid age group data, giving us a highly targeted and relevant audience that would see our ad.
After reviewing multiple TV channels, we opted for Channel 4, due to their weighting and selection of property-related programming.
We worked closely with them to pick the best ad spots on the most relevant programmes, based on budgets, channels and audience volume considerations.
The final plan resulted in the ad showing against prime-time Channel 4 spots for:
It also appeared alongside a host of other property-related programmes on Channel 4, All 4 and the Home TV channel, including:
Above the line advertising is tricky to measure, as it is primarily an offline medium, making it tough to correlate spend and performance of the ads.
Our focus for this activity was to increase brand awareness, so we started by gathering a consolidated data set for historical brand searches. To create this, we used Google Search Console and Google Ads data to establish traffic (clicks) and search volume (impressions) for MAB’s core brand terms.
We pulled historical data from both platforms to establish a baseline for brand searches when there was no TV activity in place and did this over a couple of years. This allowed us to see year-on-year percentage changes on a weekly basis, allowing for seasonality and natural brand uplift in our analysis.
Using Power BI as our data visualisation tool, we could:
From this dashboard, we were able to establish the baseline performance on a weekly basis, then analyse uplift in impressions and clicks when TV activity was live. This helped us see uplift in brand awareness, brand traffic and the impact on the CTR of searches for the brand.
We could also review the halo effect of the ad, so the impact the TV activity had on brand searches and clicks once activity had stopped.
The campaign proved a success, with an uplift across impressions, searches and CTR when activity was live.
Combined, the activity was successful at generating additional brand searches through Google. The significantly faster growth versus baseline of brand clicks indicates the advertising resonated with users, leading them to visit the website. Furthermore, the increase in brand searches and brand clicks is an indicator our targeted approach to TV was successful.
Not only did we see strong performance over the campaign, there was a clear ‘halo effect’ which saw YOY performance for brand searches and brand clicks continue to outperform the baseline, even after TV advertising had ended.
We observed YOY performance for brand searches and brand clicks exceed the baseline in the four weeks following the Sky campaign and two weeks following Channel 4 activity.
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