Linking real-world behaviour to reality TV
This week’s egtabite takes a deeper dive into an ambitious study presented by ITV at egta’s Market Intelligence Meeting in Budapest end of January. The UK sales house showcased innovative research on Love Island – the smash hit reality show which took the UK by storm – with a focus on measuring the impact of the multiple brand partners’ activities around the show.
As a core component of ITV’s commercial strategy, the sales house wants to help advertisers understand the impact of their media investments, while at the same time setting benchmarks for ground-breaking advertising effectiveness research.
The celebrity lifestyle
Proving a massive success with ITV2’s young audiences, Love Island sees its occupants live the celebrity lifestyle in a stunning villa on the beautiful island of Mallorca, while they get to know each other a little better. Full of flirting, jealousy, rejection and romance, Love Island is an emotional feast of lust and passion in the sun.
The success of this show is a clear reminder to the industry that young people do watch commercial television – and lots of it.
Love Island can take credit for the biggest audience ever on ITV2 – an episode on 8 July consolidated to 4.5m viewers on TV alone. The show also had the biggest audience on a digital channel since 2010 for 16-34s & 16-24s. Love Island had 2.3m 16-34 viewers and 0.9m 16-24 viewers (via TV set: live, PVR and VOD), which are the biggest audiences on TV in 2018 for these demographics outside of the England World Cup matches and I’m A Celebrity.¹
A research on brand effectiveness for the show
In 2018, ITV partnered with On Device Research to conduct their most ambitious study to date to measure the impact of Love Island’s partnerships with brands such as Superdrug, Missguided, Samsung, Kellog’s, Rimmel and more.
The study was able to measure cross-media ad impact across a range of channels: ITV2, ITV Hub, the Love Island app and digital display.
The methodology for the partnership with Superdrug included the recruitment of 3,000 (18-34s) respondents and the use of Audio Content Recognition technology to passively measure TV ad exposure, with tracking for digital ads to provide a full picture of passive ad exposure.
It also included the creation of control and exposed groups to measure the impact of the campaign on brand metrics and the use of geo-location data via Location Sciences to measure Superdrug and supermarket in-store traffic.
Results
The research yielded great results with regards to brand awareness, brand consideration, online visits and traffic to stores:
86 % of Love Island viewers were aware of the brand partners, agreeing that sponsorships boost brand awareness as part of a wider campaign. Missguided, the women’s clothing brand, benefitted the most from the partnership in terms of driving brand awareness with a 16% uplift. ²
Brand partners saw an average of 9% increase in brand consideration².
Superdrug experienced a fivefold increase in website visits among Love Island viewers ², and a 14% increase in in-store traffic among viewers during the campaign. The partnership led to 300K incremental visits to Superdrug. Assuming that the average spend per visit was £10 this equates to £3m incremental revenue³.
Moreover, the results of the study have been very well received, offering the commercial teams a cornerstone of insights to engage with clients.
“This ground-breaking study shows how partnering with ITV’s fantastic content not only drives brand fame, but also changes actual behaviours amongst viewers. The results will be instrumental in helping ITV increase revenue for Love Island in 2019”, says Claire Heys, Director of Brand Partnerships & Content at ITV
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1.Source: BARB/AdvantEdge, – Individuals
2.Source: On Device Research/Love Island Partnership Effectiveness Research: Linking real-world behaviours to reality TV
3.Source: On Device Research/Love Island Partnership Effectiveness Research: Linking real-world behaviours to reality TV Source: Love Island Study On Device Research, *based on average expenditure toiletries/cosmetics on GB TGI
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