At Cohn Moscarelli the murmur around the office is, “OMG! What do I do now that my client’s spots have been bumped out?” The nail biting and hair ripping frustration can be heard from the media department, because air time has been consumed by political advertisers, while non-political TV commercial inventory is shrinking like the waistband of your favorite pants on Thanksgiving Day. Media Buyers who have booked good paying customers in advance are getting their spots bumped off the air by candidates willing to spend their donated campaign dollars to flood the air waves. For example, third quarter local rates were roughly in the low hundreds for daytime rotators, but now rates have been spotted in the thousands! How do you overcome such high rates and keep your client’s phones ringing on a tight Direct Response test budget?
Try These Tips for Clearing your Budgets:
- Targetable National & Regional Cable Rotator Packages
These packages are available for TV media buying in the periods of politically engulfed air time, and can be quite easy to place.
- Analyze, Analyze, Analyze
If you scrutinize the networks and times you have aired on before, and find which part of the day offers you the best response and lowest cost per lead, then you can hone down that sweet spot. You can research what your target audience may be watching when they saw the ad, and see if you can find it elsewhere i.e. Desperate Housewives on ABC or The Kardashian’s on cable- there is a lot of audience duplication and you get better value on cable.
- Book Air Time in Advance
If it is a show like “Jeopardy,” that you know will air at the same time, it would benefit you or your client to book the TV air time for that time slot in advance for the upcoming quarters. If you get most of your responses from seasonal shows you can buy program specific, the rate may be a tad higher than a broad day-part rotator, but you will get the response you are looking for, and that little bit extra that was paid, will pay for itself in responses.
These above tips can help media minds survive the rigors of buying TV air time when there is not much to buy, because of the political season. These tips could keep media professionals sane and clients satisfied with the results, rather than croaking over paying for high dollar spot times. Political season is hard on all of us, consumers and media professionals alike, even though we place quite a bit of political media here at Cohn Moscarelli; we still suffer the same TV buying time, jigsaw puzzle every two years.
