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With The Masters Postponed, See How Simulmedia Can Help Advertisers Reach Those Viewers

Mary Grace Scully
Mary Grace Scully
Published: Apr. 10, 2020
Media BuyingTargeting

Simulmedia is determined to help marketers by showing them it’s still very possible to reach their target audiences (better yet - even more of them) without live sporting events. Some of you responded to let us know you found our NCAA experiment helpful, so we’ve decided to create a similar experiment for The Masters.

The Masters, however, presents a unique situation. Golf fans all know this weekend would have seen the closing rounds of the golf tournament, but many might not realize the lack of brand diversity in the commercials that air during the broadcast. The tournament has a deal with only three advertisers: IBM, AT&T and Mercedes. Each pays about $6 to $8 million in exchange for 4 minutes per hour, each getting about 66 spots across the four days.

Some other unique factors to note about the tournament: it offers significantly fewer ads than other top viewing draws, with about 33% fewer commercial spots than events such as the Final Four.

For just 17% of the cost, Simulmedia’s campaign would reach 25% more A25-54 Online Investors than any of those three advertisers did in all of their 2019 Masters spots combined.

The first two days air on ESPN and the final two air on CBS. As you’d imagine, the last day garners the most reach per spot, especially with Tiger Woods taking home the green jacket last year. Our planning software took all of this into account when setting up the rules of our experiment.

Given how exclusive this advertising opportunity typically is, there are probably many more marketers who’d like access to the The Masters’ audience. So our experiment will show how these left-out marketers can reach as many, if not more, of The Masters audience this year while they watch other programs on TV.

Rules of our experiment

Campaign duration: 4 days. We selected 4/9-4/12 to align with the original 2020 Masters dates.

Campaign cost: $1 million. This is only about 17% of the cost of one of the three sponsorship deals, which go for an average of $7 million.

Results

Audience reach for A25-54 Online Investors and A-35-64 with household income of $150K+ for The Masters and Simulmedia campaign.

For just 17% of the cost, Simulmedia’s campaign would reach 25% more A25-54 Online Investors than any of those three advertisers did in all of their 2019 Masters spots combined. We’d also reach three times more than the maximum reach of any single one of their spots. To put this in perspective, when Tiger slipped on the green jacket, there was just 33% of the number of online investors tuning in live compared to the amount Simulmedia’s planning software was able to find in a four day campaign that excluded live sports.

For $1 million (again only 17% of the investment of one of the three advertisers) Simulmedia can reach 10% more A35-64 with a household income of $150k or more than one of the advertisers did throughout the duration of the whole tournament combined.

But to really drive home the power of our platform, we ran the experiment again at a reduced budget. With just 3.5% of the budget ($250K vs $7M), we'd still deliver about 50% of the reach for both audiences.

Plus, the average frequency for each advertiser in The Masters is between 7 and 9, but all our plans have a frequency between 2 and 3. This is because our planner is programmed to maximize unique reach based on the principle that conversion rates are at their highest when going from a frequency of 0 to a frequency of 1 - i.e. a previously unreached person is reached for the first time.

Chart showing audience reach of The Masters compared to Simulmedia. Simulmedia is shown in various campaign budgets.

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

Our platform selected 60 networks and 653 spots across all of national linear TV. Here’s a closer look at the A25-54 Online Investors plan:

TV networks and spots that were cost-effective in driving target audience reach.

While this was just an experiment, it shows that coveted viewers can still be found across all of national TV despite major sports cancellations. With Simulmedia, you can reach these viewers, and more just like them, when they watch other programs on TV.

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.