Kerry Corke: “Measure purchase to optimise media spend”

In this latest edition of our Perspectives series, Kerry Corke, Global Media Director at Kantar Worldpanel, looks at how using purchase data can help brands make better advertising decisions in a complex media environment.

Kerry explains that there are three main benefits to connecting purchase data to advertising:

“Firstly, we live in a much more dynamic environment today, to understand how an advert has influenced buying we need to know what the consumer has seen. Secondly, by understanding how people usually behave through continuous tracking, when something disruptive such as advertising happens, we can understand the overall impact. Thirdly, advertising is increasingly moving towards targeting audiences and activating spend. Measuring someone through the media loop and their response is really powerful.”

Kerry then goes on to look at how activating and targeting relate to the rules of brand growth.

“The digital age enables us to precisely target individuals because we know so much about them. Although this doesn’t tie in with Ehrenberg-Bass and the rules of brand growth, we don’t discount them. We stand by the fact that the way to grow brands is by attracting as many buyers as possible.”

She continues:

“In terms of media, different forms can be complementary, doing two things together can be very powerful and create an overall uplift in sales. There is a constant tension on budget. Clients need to spread what they’ve got more thinly across more channels. There is only so much you can do on TV without compromising your budget so it’s about getting the right balance between the precision of digital for light and non-users, along with mass advertising on TV to get the best return from advertising investment.”

Considering the question of whether penetration is still important, Kerry explains:

“It is crucial, everything comes back to sales. We know from all the consumer media measurement studies that we do, the average effectiveness of advertising on sales is 4.5% - this can be slightly higher for more engaged products like health and beauty and lower for food and beverage. Only one in ten campaigns achieve more than a 7.5% sales return. We know the route to brand growth is recruitment. As well as understanding how many have been recruited, we can also show how many would have left the brand if it hadn’t advertised. So the more you understand about what influences ROI, the better the chance you have to influence it.”

When thinking about the biggest challenge facing advertisers today, Kerry believes that:

“There is so much more media to work with and budgets aren’t getting any bigger. Clients don’t want to invest in what they can’t measure. Knowing who you are targeting, directing media spend towards those individuals means that there is a better chance of optimising spend in the future and making more fruitful decisions.”

Watch the full interview by clicking on the video above.

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