ABC and Accenture Strategy Discover the Secret of Sales ROI

One of the more challenging aspects of advertising sales is calculating ROI. This is made even more complex with the proliferation of content platforms and consumer devices. What really contributes to sales uplift? Disney|ABC, in addressing this issue, just released Phase 2 of an attribution analysis conducted by Accenture Strategy. Phase 2 is the follow-up to a custom study completed in 2016 that used four big data sources to prove the role and value of content in context in driving sales ROI.

Cindy Davis, Executive Vice President Consumer Experience, Disney|ABC Television Group, took me through the study and how it contributes to their overall research strategy. “Our objective in this study is to measure what matters and there was industry pressure to measure ROI,” she explained. “In Phase 2 of our study we examined 26 national brands over six industries and their corresponding sales data representing $25 billion in marketing spend, with $11 billion in television spending. We found a very interesting connection between engaged audiences and their content, and the sales and ROI we can drive to clients who participate.”

Mike Chapman, Managing Director, Accenture Strategy, Global Lead for Media and Entertainment Strategy Practice, added that his company provided three years of data, which offered a “closed loop view of advertising ROI … types of impressions delivered, how many, which channels, what prices were paid and the impacts from those impressions, delivered on incremental sales week over week.”

In addition to their marketing data, Davis asked Accenture Strategy to incorporate four other datasets in their recent study: Nielsen ratings, E-Poll, Nielsen Social and Magid’s EmotionalDNA, which Davis described as, “intriguing because we are in the business of connecting with viewers emotionally and Magid’s DNA work speaks to that.”

Takeaway Highlights

• There is a halo effect on sales with multi-platform television. “This doesn’t get talked about a lot,” Davis noted. “You hear about last click attribution in digital advertising. But TV goes a long way to establish and amplify the impacts of all media.”
• Consumers’ commitment to the content matters. “We looked at both the expressed and the observed commitment to the content and found that the greater the effort to watch, the greater the ROI,” Davis said. There is 2X the ROI with Magid’s intentionality measurement.
• Content quality matters. Davis’ group examined perceived quality, as defined by the viewer, and quantified quality indicators using Magid’s emotional dimensions. They found that the higher the perceived quality of the content, the greater the ROI. Using Magid, the three most impactful dimensions for higher ROI were Smarts (programs that are informative, real and inspiring), Edge (unpredictable, outrageous and funny) and Relatability (original, suspenseful and intelligent). “There is a direct connection between the emotions viewers feel about a show and the benefits advertisers get in terms of greater ROI,” Davis noted.

Read the article in full at MediaVillage.com.

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