Nielson Facebook Reach Study

1A C U S TO M A N A LY S I S C O M M I S S I O N E D B Y FA C E B O O K Copyright © 2013 The Nielsen Company

R U N N I N G D I G I TA L A U D I E N C E S, WA L K I N G A D V E R T I S I N G D O L L A R S THE UNTAPPED REACH OPPORTUNITY IN DIGITAL MEDIA

A CUSTOM ANALYSIS COMMISSIONED BY FACEBOOK JULY 2013

2 A C U S TO M A N A LY S I S C O M M I S S I O N E D B Y FA C E B O O K

E X E C U T I V E S U M M A R YWe are still in the early days of multi-platform advertising.

But preconceptions have already developed about the “best way” to leverage certain media to achieve your marketing

objectives. Specifically, industry consensus is that TV remains the “reach medium,” with its ability to attract large

assemblages of viewers across demos, particularly for the largest networks and during the prime time daypart.

Meanwhile, online is viewed as a medium by which marketers can reach more specific audiences and drive incremental

reach (e.g., light TV viewers).

Continued rapid Internet penetration globally and an explosion in the popularity of social networks and apps

challenges this view. Facebook, with more than 1 billion users globally, is a good example of this evolution.

Facebook’s user base results in a potential to drive massive reach, either duplicative or incremental to reach achieved

on TV. Have we reached a new paradigm in terms of the role of online in driving reach for advertising campaigns?

While marketers should also consider additional metrics, such as frequency and time spent, and measure their

advertising across the 3R framework—Reach, Resonance, and Reaction—to truly understand advertising performance

and optimization opportunities, this paper focuses on marketers’ reach objectives. Specifically, this Facebook-

commissioned study investigates this phenomenon by comparing Facebook’s total site reach to that of large TV

networks, and establishes heuristics for optimizing reach delivery on a large CPG company’s multi-platform campaign.

Through this approach, we address a number of fundamental questions:

1. How does Facebook’s site reach compare to that of TV networks? To what degree do their respective

audiences overlap?

2. How does this reach differ for different demographics and across different dayparts?

3. What is the optimal way to allocate campaign spend between TV and online (Facebook) to drive better reach

performance?

We find that Facebook is capable of delivering site reach at levels comparable to major TV networks, particularly for

certain dayparts and demos. By examining a model optimizing a campaign for maximum on-target audience reach

across media channels, we observe that Facebook continues to provide incremental reach with a large portion of

campaign allocation.

Overall, this paper shows that digital publishers with large, robust sets of high quality user data (like Facebook) can in

fact serve as an effective foundation for reach delivery. By investing in the online media channel, brand marketers can

increase their audience reach while at the same time creating an opportunity for dual screen media exposure. This is

all possible within the original campaign budget.


Not all people buy all products. Generally speaking, the purchasers of a given product

tend to skew toward a particular set of demographic and psychographic profiles.

For instance, parents are more likely to buy diapers and men are more likely to buy

shaving cream. Marketers spend a lot of time thinking about the optimal ‘audience’

for their advertising campaigns. Once that audience is selected, the question is how

best to deliver media to it. It follows that marketers would then demand campaign

reporting metrics that measure the efficacy of a given campaign at reaching its intended

audience.

Television advertising is the most well-established medium for marketing, capturing the

largest portion of spend in an estimated $495 billion worldwide advertising industry.

Total TV ad spend in the United States (US) rose to $76.5 billion in 2012, up from

$71.8 billion in 2011 – another year of growth1. The television advertising industry has

adopted Gross Ratings Points (GRPs) achieved within particular age and gender groups

as measured by Nielsen as the industry standard ad metric in the US. GRPs simply

equal the percentage of the intended audience the ad campaign reached multiplied by

the average frequency each person within the group saw the ad*. In short, TV media

plans are generally optimized to achieve maximum GRPs within a particular age and

gender grouping and a set time interval. In the book “When Ads Work: New Proof that

Advertising Triggers Sales,” John Philip Jones summarizes the key goals that define the

way educated brand marketers thought, and most continue to think, about success in

television marketing:

1. Aim to cover a substantial proportion of the brand’s target group once every

week with as a little duplication as possible. “Substantial proportion” is a

judgment call based on the size of the brand, its target group, and knowledge

of the effectiveness of defined levels of reach achieved in the past.

2. To attain this minimum reach, determine the optimum number of weekly

gross rating points (GRPs) and establish the best types of dayparts and

television programs to use in order to minimize audience duplication…

3. Run the weekly advertising pattern for as many weeks as the budget will allow.

Any inevitable gaps in the schedule should occur during the low season.

CHALLENGES AND ADVANCEMENTS IN THE ONLINE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY

*For example, if an ad

campaign is aimed at Males 18-

24 and it reached 30 percent of

all Males 18-24 with an average

frequency of 1 ad per person,

the campaign would have

achieved 30 GRPs. Similarly,

if the same ad campaign had

reached 20 percent of all

Males 18-24 with an average

frequency of 2 ads per person,

the campaign would have

achieved 40 GRPs.

Source: 1.Nielsen Global AdView Pulse Report, Q4 2012.


The reality is the pie is growing in terms of media consumption. TV still leads

in terms of time spent, with the average US TV viewer watching 156 hours of TV

per month, the average PC owner spending 29 hours online, and the average

smartphone user spending 24 hours on apps and web each month2. The

number of computer Internet users has grown from 156 million in 2007 to 212

million in 2012 and smartphone penetration has increased from 7 percent in

2007 to 59 percent in 20123. Additionally, the number of households that do

not receive TV programming via a traditional platform has more than doubled

in the last six years, growing from 2 million in 2007 to 5 million 20134.

The first step for marketers who are heavily invested in TV advertising in

determining how to allocate spend more effectively across media channels

is the ability to measure campaigns in a comparable way across all these

channels. This is more difficult than it may otherwise seem because digital

advertising has widely adopted a set of divergent campaign measurement

metrics from that of TV as the media channel norms – namely impression

counts and click-through-rate. Nielsen has developed two products, Nielsen

Online Campaign Ratings™ and Nielsen Cross-Platform Campaign Ratings™,

which aim to fill this demand for cross-media channel campaign measurement.

Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings measures digital campaigns using GRPs in a

way that is directly comparable to that of TV. Nielsen Cross-Platform Campaign

Ratings measures campaigns that are running on TV and online within one,

GRP-based report.

In short, though the tools are now available, many marketers are still left trying

to create integrated campaigns without proper vision into performance within

and across platforms. A major underlying issue preventing the advertising

industry from keeping pace with this audience migration to digital consumption

had been the lack of uniform measurement.

Sources: 2.Q4 2012 Nielsen Cross-Platform Report, December 2012 Nielsen Smartphone Analytics. 3.Q4 2007 and Q4 2012 Nielsen Cross-Platform

Report, Q4 2007 and Q4 2012 Nielsen Mobile Insights. 4.Q4 2012 Nielsen Cross-Platform Report.


UNDERSTANDING ONLINE AND TV REACH A CASE STUDY

To further illustrate and understand the distribution of media audiences on

television and online, we conducted an in-depth analysis of potential audience

reach using Nielsen’s US TV/Internet Data Fusion panel which represents

the total US population of TV and PC users. In this analysis, we looked at

the reach for four television networks within specific age and gender groups

at different times during the day. We then compared that with the reach of

the Facebook PC digital network, as a percent of the total population during

the same times of the day. It is important to note that time spent metrics

and mobile media consumption were not included in the daypart analyses

contained in Figure 1.A and Figure 1.B. Figure 1.C uses Nielsen’s TV/Internet/

Mobile Data Fusion panel to measure differences in reach between Facebook

(PC + Mobile) and TV networks looking at a full month of data.

0

25

50

75

100

19%

50%

55%52%

42%

46%46%

36%

47%

30%

56% 56%58%

42%

47%

17%15%

15%15%

21%19%

20%20%

29%26%

25%25%

34%32%

28%31%

40%39%

33%

40%

P12-17 P18-24 P35-44 P45-54 P55-64 P65+P25-34

Network 2Network 1 Network 4Network 3Facebook

FIGURE 1.A5

POPULATION REACH BY AGE - DAYTIME WEEKDAYS

Source: 5.Figure 1.A: Nielsen TV/Internet Data Fusion, October 2012.


0.0

62.5

125.0

187.5

250.0

62% 56%70%

56% 55%61% 59%

FBMobile

FBOnline

Network 1 Network 2 Network 3 Network 4FB OnlineOR

Mobile

0.0

62.5

125.0

187.5

250.0

54%61%

73%83% 82% 83% 84%

FBMobile

FBOnline

FB OnlineOR

Mobile

Network 1 Network 2 Network 3 Network 4

0.0

62.5

125.0

187.5

250.0

64% 64%77% 74% 71% 75% 73%

FBMobile

FBOnline

FB OnlineOR

Mobile


0.0

62.5

125.0

187.5

250.0

30%44%

52%

89% 88% 86% 91%

FBMobile

FBOnline

FB OnlineOR

Mobile


PERSONS 18–24

PERSONS 35–54

PERSONS 25–34

PERSONS 55+

FIGURE 1.B6

FIGURE 1.C7

POPULATION REACH BY AGE - PRIMETIME

POPULATION REACH BY AGE - TOTAL DAY

Sources: 6.Figure 1.B: Nielsen TV/Internet Data Fusion, October 2012. 7.Figure 1.C: Nielsen TV/Internet/Mobile Data Fusion, January 2013.

0

25

50

75

100

25%

50% 51%

62%

55%

61%

48%

69%

74%72%

70%

74%

36%

77%75%

72%

78%

22%

77%79%

72%

81%

44%

63%65%

64%

53%

37%

43%

38%42%

47%

40%

46%

41%

P12-17 P18-24 P35-44 P45-54 P55-64 P65+P25-34

Network 2Network 1 Network 4Network 3Facebook


These data point to a few interesting conclusions specifically around reach:

1. TV is more effective at reaching all audience segments during primetime hours

when compared with daytime hours.

2. Facebook exhibits relatively consistent reach across both daytime

and primetime dayparts.

3. During the weekday daytime hours, Facebook achieves a higher reach than the TV

networks for every age cohort containing persons younger than 55, while during

primetime hours, each of the four TV networks achieves a higher reach than

Facebook in each age cohort except for ‘Persons 18-24’.

4. Mobile can also offer incremental reach for both online and TV, and is another

way for fully integrated plans to achieve highest reach results.

MEASURING MULTI-PLATFORM ADVERTISING SUCCESSINCREMENTAL AND CROSS-MEDIA REACH

With near-universal market adoption, it is safe to say that television is a mature

advertising ecosystem. To optimize spend, brand marketers can find value in

emerging digital channels that can complement TV. The success with which online

advertising can optimize reach within an advertising plan can be measured in

two ways:

1. Incremental Reach: the marginal, extended reach within the desired audience

segment the campaign achieves as a result of the online component, i.e. the

portion of the audience reached only on the digital platform.

2. Cross-media Reach: the portion of the audience for whom the campaign’s

message was reinforced via impressions being viewed both online and on TV, i.e.

the portion of the audience reached on both TV and a digital platform. Nielsen

has shown that cross-media reach is more effective in driving resonance than

reach through a single media channel8.

Source: 8.Nielsen IAB Online Video Study, 2012.


In this section of the paper we attempt to explicitly measure incremental and

cross-media reach within particular demographic groups and dayparts. We do

this at a macro level by comparing the audience reach estimates of both the

TV and Facebook (PC only) platforms as a whole using the Nielsen TV/Internet

Data Fusion panel. We then perform a similar analysis at the micro level by

taking an actual television ad campaign and executing a simulated exercise

of reallocating portions of TV media spend into online spend to measure the

resulting impact on reach that could be achieved by the campaign.

We start our analysis of incremental and cross-media reach at the macro level

by measuring the incremental and cross-media reach within demographic

groups9 and dayparts. We look at top TV networks as well as the PC-only

Facebook platform. The data is analyzed in an “only-only-both” method (TV-

only, digital-only and duplicated reach across platforms) to demonstrate the

incremental reach digital o�ers, as well as the ability of digital to drive deeper

engagement with audiences via cross-media reach.

MACRO ANALYSIS: UNDERSTANDING REACH ACROSS FACEBOOK AND TV

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50


14%15% 15% 15%

5%4% 4% 4%

13% 11% 11% 11%

Network-Only Reach

Duplicated Reach

Facebook-Only Reach

Network-Only Reach

Duplicated Reach

Facebook-Only Reach

0369

1215182124273033363942454851545760

11%13%

13%13%

14%12%

13%12%

33% 28%33%

29%


DAY TIME

FIGURE 2.APRIME TIME

Source: 9.Data not shown for all demos. Figures 2.A-2.D: Nielsen TV/Internet Data Fusion, October 2012.


Network-Only Reach

Duplicated Reach

Facebook-Only Reach

0369

1215182124273033363942454851545760

38% 38% 38% 38%

14% 12% 13% 12%

33% 28% 33% 29%


Network-Only Reach

Duplicated Reach

Facebook-Only Reach

048

121620242832364044485256606468727680

37% 39% 41% 41%

18% 16% 14% 15%

11% 10% 11% 10%


Network-Only Reach

Duplicated Reach

Facebook-Only Reach

048

121620242832364044485256606468727680

22% 22%27%

23%

21% 20%15%

20%

26% 25% 21% 27%


Network-Only Reach

Duplicated Reach

Facebook-Only Reach

048

121620242832364044485256606468727680

25%28%

24%27%

25%22%

26%23%

17% 14% 17% 15%


Network-Only Reach

Duplicated Reach

Facebook-Only Reach

048

121620242832364044485256606468727680

15%19%

17%20%

36%32%

35%31%

26% 22% 26% 22%


Network-Only Reach

Duplicated Reach

Facebook-Only Reach

05

101520253035404550556065707580859095

100

6% 7% 8%6%

31% 29% 28% 31%

47% 46% 44% 47%


DAY TIME

DAY TIME

DAY TIME

PRIME TIME

PRIME TIME

PRIME TIME

POPULATION REACH BY PLATFORM - PERSONS 18-24



FIGURE 2.B

FIGURE 2.C

FIGURE 2.D


Generally speaking, we observe higher levels of Facebook-only reach

(incremental) during the daytime and higher levels of cross-media reach

between Facebook and TV in the primetime hours, which are results

consistent with our earlier analysis of daypart reach for each of the platforms.

This is most evident when looking at the younger age cohorts.

Some of the more striking results are within the 18-24 and 25-34 age groups.

Facebook adds significant incremental reach when looking at individual

networks for the daytime daypart and significant cross-media reach during

primetime for these age groups. During the day, the Facebook-only reach

addition to network audiences ranges from 37 percent to 41 percent. When

looking at these same demographic groups during primetime, the Facebook-

only reach ranges from 15 percent to 28 percent, while the cross-media reach

is much higher, ranging from 22 percent to 36 percent. This type of analysis

offers an exciting opportunity for brands to better achieve their campaign

reach goals. For brands aiming to extend reach, publishers should be

evaluated based on demographics and dayparts where they are able to offer

the highest unduplicated reach. Brands that are aiming to reinforce the

messaging through duplication can focus on publishers that offer significant

cross-media reach.

While these findings on reach are insightful in aggregate, marketers are still

faced with challenges, asking, “What is the optimal media mix between TV

and digital, and how do I measure the impact of this mix on reach?”

MICRO ANALYSIS: PLANNING FOR THE OPTIMAL ALLOCATION - A CPG CASE STUDY

This next section of the paper takes an actual television advertising media

plan through a simulated exercise of reallocating TV media spend into online

spend to measure the resulting impact on reach achieved by the campaign.

It is important to note that this analysis focuses only on reach and does not

measure other metrics, such as time spent, or the other pillars of the 3R

framework, resonance and reaction, which are all relevant for evaluating a

campaign’s success. To perform this exercise, we use the television-viewing

and Internet-browsing behavior from Nielsen TV/Internet Data Fusion.

‘Online’ in this analysis is defined by a set of 10 of the top publishers based

on historical campaign performance within the females 18-34 demo. Using

Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings data, the top publishers were determined

by how well they were able to reach the intended audience, in this case

females 18-34. As a second breakout, we have included Facebook in addition

to these 10 publishers.


The initial insight is the increase in reach among Females 18-34. The campaign

started with a baseline reach of 66 percent of females ages 18-34. This reach

increases rapidly with a 5 percent shift in spend from TV to online, bumping

the reach up from 66 percent to 73 percent for total reach, excluding Facebook,

and to 76 percent for total reach, including Facebook. This incremental reach is

achieved with no additional spend on the part of the advertiser11. Reach continues

to grow with the additional shifts of media budget into online, but eventually at

diminishing rates. At a 40 percent shift to online excluding Facebook, the overall

reach of the campaign begins to decline.

There is also an underlying story in cross-media reach. While we observed a sharp

increase in total reach with the first 5 percent shift, we do not see a similar level

of decrease in TV reach. The baseline TV reach is 66 percent for the campaign,

and with the first shift this drops to 65 percent when combining the TV only reach

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

7%

28%66% 66%

38%

10%

33%

31%

12%

35%

28%

13%

37%

25%

15%

38%

23%

18%

38%

19%

11%

35%

30%

14%

41%

23%

16%

43%

20%

17%

44%

18%

19%

45%

16%

23%73%

66% 66%

74% 75% 75% 76% 75% 76%78% 79% 79% 80% 80%

44%

13%

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 40% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 40%

TV Only ReachDuplicated ReachOnline Only Reach

Allocation of Online Excluding Facebook Allocation of Online Including Facebook

REA

CH

(%)

CPG BRAND MEDIA INVENTORY OPTIMIZATION - FEMALES 18-34

FIGURE 310

Sources: 10.Figure 3: Nielsen TV/Internet Data Fusion, August 2012. 11.Average CPMs for each of the publishers were used to calculate impressions that

could be allocated to online with the budget shifts.


CONCLUSION

The proliferation of connected, digital media devices and options has

propelled an evolving media consumption landscape. The reality is advertising

budgets have not followed at the same rate. A large barrier preventing

higher growth of digital advertising spend has been the lack of a consistent

measurement framework between TV and other digital media channels with

which to judge the success or failure of allocation decisions. Consistent

metrics are crucial to compare performance, gauge success and justify spend

across multiple platforms.

Throughout this paper we looked at comparable reach metrics across

Facebook and TV networks to create a consistent measurement framework

that lends itself to multi-platform capability. Two overarching conclusions can

be made from this analysis:

1. Digital publishers with vast reach and high-quality demographic data,

such as Facebook, should be considered a viable option alongside

television when a marketer is pursuing an audience reach objective,

particularly for younger age cohorts.

2. Planning with particular attention to dayparts for both TV and online

presents exciting, synergistic opportunities for brands to increase in-

target reach and create an advantageous audience for dual screen

exposure, all while maintaining the same campaign budget.

and the duplicated reach, excluding Facebook, and remains at 66 percent

when combining the TV only reach and the duplicated reach, including

Facebook. Not only is the advertiser benefiting from extending reach, but

they are also adding a good amount of duplication across TV and online. This

overlapping audience can unlock a wealth of opportunity for an advertiser

to engage their key consumers multiple times, across media channels, to

reinforce their messaging.

This analysis shows in an applied example how a brand advertising on

TV can maintain the same overall budget, reallocate a portion of spend

into digital media, increase their reach among the intended audience, and

create an opportunity to reinforce the messaging with cross-media reach

across channels. In this CPG case study, with Facebook included, the brand

increased their in-target reach from 66 percent to 80 percent with roughly 44

percent of the audience having an opportunity to be exposed to messaging

on multiple channels.


ABOUT NIELSEN Nielsen Holdings N.V. (NYSE: NLSN) is a global information and

measurement company with leading market positions in marketing

and consumer information, television and other media measurement,

online intelligence and mobile measurement. Nielsen has a presence in

approximately 100 countries, with headquarters in New York, USA and

Diemen, the Netherlands.

For more information, visit www.nielsen.com.

Copyright © 2013 The Nielsen Company. All rights reserved. Nielsen and

the Nielsen logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of CZT/ACN

Trademarks, L.L.C. Other product and service names are trademarks or

registered trademarks of their respective companies. 13/5455

As audiences continue to increase their digital media consumption, large

brand marketers that currently focus primarily on advertising within the TV

media channel should adopt consistent measurement frameworks and begin

allocating advertising dollars digitally to take advantage of incremental reach

opportunities – or risk being beaten to the punch by their competition.


Business

Nielson Facebook Reach Study