MUMBAI: A 100 per cent allocation of a $1.75 million budget to free-to-air (FTA) results in a campaign viewed by just 33 per cent of the TV population. The campaign reach increases from 33 per cent to 56 per cent when half of the TV budget is redistributed to multichannel TV from only FTA TV allocation.

Casbaa has released a powerful first-of-its-kind reach and frequency analysis of the definable returns on media investment in multichannel TV advertising.

Commissioned by Casbaa and executed by global media agency Universal McCann, the study measures the benefits of allocating variable percentages of a $1.75 million TV budget on multichannel TV and FTA in seven key Asia-Pacific markets: India, Australia, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan.

Casbaa CEO Simon Twiston Davies said, "The clear advantage of advertising on multichannel TV becomes self evident when simulating real-life budgeting scenarios via robust Peoplemeter data. The numbers demonstrate that multichannel TV makes undeniable fiscal sense when
reach and return on investment are optimized."

Added Universal McCann Hong Kong managing director Chris Skinner,"This powerful new look at TV data allows to us to better understand that for a regional campaign, switching a portion of the budget onto regional multichannel TV channels means we can deliver higher reach at a lower cost-per-thousand for our clients."

An equal combination of FTA and multichannel TV sees total impressions (gross number of times a commercial is viewed) multiplied by 2.5 times from an FTA only schedule: increasing from 537 million to 1.4 billion. Using multichannel TV lowers cost per thousand (CPT) by up to 60 per cent in a 50/50 multichannel TV/FTA combination versus an FTA only schedule.

"Campaigns that allocate part of their terrestrial TV budget to multichannel TV reap the rewards. The research tells us that you can effectively double your reach, increase the viewing frequency of ads, and lower your CPT – all with no extra investment" added Twiston Davies.

A similar trend was also monitored when the demographics data was analysed to reflect key age, gender and socio-economic groups.

In the coming months, Casbaa will release yet more data from two other global media agencies supporting the case for multichannel TV
advertising.