How we used TV to increase impressions & clicks for Mortgage Advice Bureau

The Approach

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.

The programmatic way

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:

• People looking to remortgage
• People looking to move home
• Either of the above where their mortgage value is likely to increase

In addition, we overlaid age group data, giving us a highly targeted and relevant audience that would see our ad.

The traditional way

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:

• Location, Location, Location
• George Clarke: Old House, New Home

It also appeared alongside a host of other property-related programmes on Channel 4, All 4 and the Home TV channel, including:

• A New Life in the Sun
• A Place in the Sun
• Bang on Budget
• DIY SOS
• Escape to the Country
• Extreme Makeover
• Homes Under the Hammer
• Location, Location, Location
• My Dream Derelict Home
• My Dream Home
• Sun, Sea and Selling Houses

Analysing the impact

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:

• Visualise YOY brand performance
• Blend Google Search Console and Google Ads data to establish volumes for brand searches, clicks and impact on CTR from these searches, along with any halo effect from the TV activity
• Plot TV airtimes and establish the impact on clicks and impressions
• Have access to a dashboard that we can continually add to for any future TV or above the line activity

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.