Starcom develops tool to get higher reach via ads

Advertising firm Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG) has developed a new media planning tool that claims to increase the reach of advertisements by 9 per cent.

Advertisers looking for a bigger bang for their buck to use the tool, that calculates the net effective reach of advertisements through the main media "" television, print and radio.

"When advertisers use all the three media to reach their target consumer, it often leads to duplication of information. The consumer views the same information through all the three media. However, there was no tool that could measure the duplication. This tool, named "Abacus" combines the respondent level television viewership data purchased by Starcom from TAM media research for television and the Indian Readership Survey (IRS) data for newspaper, magazines and radio consumption data. The combined data gives the overall effect on a target consumer through all the three medias" explains Ravi Kiran, Chief Operating Officer, SMG.

Television, print and radio form nearly 90 per cent of the total advertising pie. However, in the recent time, growth in number of media has led to an inflation in media costs for the advertisers.

Experts in the advertising business points out that to deliver the same reach, companies today need to spend 30-40 per cent more than they would spend in a couple of years ago.

The average reach of each ad has decreased with the growing fragmentation in the media industry. If the companies set a target of showing the advertisement of their product to a given set of consumers, they would then have to increase the frequency of their ad to reach all those consumers.

In this scenario, Abacus will help the company to make better decision on how to improve their net effective reach to their target consumers.

The tool would be used in-house by Starcom for its clients and free of extra charge. Initially, developed by Starcom's Hong Kong-based regional technology team for China, Abacus has now been adapted in India.

The technical testing of the tool, has been completed over the last twelve weeks and intensive training of planners of use the tool will begin now.

"We will start using the tool for live client cases in or before the first week of April," said Kiran. Some of Starcom's clients in the country include Kotak Mahindra Bank, Jet Airways, Future Group and Heinz.