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With No NCAA Final Four, See How Simulmedia Finds Those Viewers Across National TV

Mary Grace Scully
Mary Grace Scully
Updated: Apr. 27, 2022
Published: Apr. 03, 2020
Linear TVTargetingMedia Buying

Saturday would have marked the beginning of the 2020 NCAA Final Four, which, to the dismay of college basketball fans, was understandably cancelled to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. However, even the most disappointed fans will find other programs to watch on TV aside from sports. And with Simulmedia’s platform, advertisers can find and efficiently reach those audiences, no matter what they’re watching.

Simulmedia has been helping brands reach hard-to-find audiences on linear TV for over a decade. We’re in a unique position to help advertisers who had been relying on the big audience draws of live sports to meet performance or brand awareness goals, and now find themselves in need of another way to reach their target audience. We’ve already helped a few clients reallocate their ad spend, and we’re here to help you, too.

To demonstrate just how powerful maximizing unique reach can be, we selected two highly sought-after audiences advertisers would have been likely to reach on March Madness: M18-34, and A24-54 with a streaming subscription. Our goal is to show you that even without a Final Four ad spot this year, you can still reach these audiences (and more of them) through patented software like Simulmedia’s.

Rules of our experiment

Campaign duration: 3 days (We selected 4/4 through 4/6 to align with the original 2020 Final Four dates.)

Campaign cost: $1 million (Championship game spots would have gone for about $1.5 million per 30-second ad and the average Final Four ad goes for about three quarters of a million.)

Results

Audience reach for A25-54 with streaming subscription and M18-34 for Final Four and Simulmedia campaign.

Simulmedia’s campaign would deliver five times more A25-54 Streamers and roughly three times more M18-34 than any single spot from last year’s Final Four.

But we didn’t stop there. To demonstrate the true power of unique, cost-effective reach and show advertisers they can still reach more of their target audience while cutting costs, we reduced the budget by 75%. For only $250K, our plans would still deliver twice as many A25-54 Streamers than any single spot from last year’s finals and about the same M18-34 as the higher end of spots did last year.

How Simulmedia's audience reach would change depending on campaign budget. With a fourth of Final Four budget, Simulmedia able to deliver twice as much audience reach of A25-54 Streamers.

So, what are these audiences watching, if not sports?

Our platform selected 58 networks and 800 spots across all of national linear TV. Here’s a closer look at the A25-54 Streamers plan:

Daypart breakdown showing impressions, % media budget, and GRPs.

Table showing most performant TV networks and surprisingly performant TV shows.

While this was just an experiment, we hope it goes to show that viewers won’t disappear when their favorite sporting events do, they instead turn to other channels. With Simulmedia, you can find them and make sure your ads air while they watch their other favorite programs.

If you’re interested in seeing how Simulmedia can strategically find your brand’s target audience, predict what they will actually watch on TV using our patented forecasting technology, use software to help you get on air and measure results fast, and help you take control during this uncertain time, let us know.

We'll get back to you with a personal campaign proposal, free of charge, showing how you can reach your strategic audience across national TV.