If your business has an e-commerce platform, companies like DCMN can tell you whether that Carte Blanche spot holds the value you think it does. TV has a role as a brand-building medium, but that is not its sole function anymore. Utilising your longer durations to establish your brand and convey product messaging is absolutely required. The question you should be asking, however, is 'when can I start spending less money and seeing actual returns?'

Digital marketing companies have the ability to measure the response to your brand ads and start building performance campaigns with lower cost values. Whether you're a 'born-digital' that is focussed on e-commerce, or a traditional business shaping up to embrace the e-commerce market, marketing companies can give you the data to help you make these tough decisions.

Every brand should advertise during prime time on TV, not just brands who 'can afford to'. DCMN has found that with the change of media consumption, across multiple platforms and devices, the traditional view that a brand needs to be 'in prime time to make an impact' isn't always the case anymore.

Rather, DCMN has experienced that, with several of their clients, higher site visits and leads are generated during daytime spots. This simple but powerful finding means that brands can reach their leads target on a smaller TV budget simply because we can now make data-driven media decisions.

TV planners usually want to include the 'big' channels to deliver on media KPIs of reach and frequency. But marketing companies can have a data-driven approach to planning.

It is important to understand that driving media KPIs are important when building a brand, but when building a TV performance campaign, there are different targets to be achieved. Driving conversions or generating leads doesn't need to come at a high cost.

With the data at their disposal, companies can analyse and determine the channels that they should be considering, the daypart that lends itself to higher conversions and the programmes that deliver the leads. Data should be put at the heart of everything that you do. This means not talking to the masses, but talking to your market, wherever they may be.

Smaller clients don’t have 'big-brand' budgets, but they are on TV and are seeing the results. Advertising in off-peak slots are very cost-efficient and are effectively delivering site visits and leads.

If your data says that advertising during 9:00 to 12:00 on a Monday, on a niche channel, will give you 13 leads for spending R5 000 on TV, would you still follow your gut or rather respond to and apply the data?

A brand with a relatively small budget really can advertise on TV. If an e-commerce client has not been on TV because they don't think they have the budget to do so, they should consider doing a test campaign over a period of two weeks.

The leads generated by that campaign will not only show the success of the campaign, but it will also give them insight into their consumer and a data-supported strategy moving forward.

Spending less money on a media campaign because you're a start-up or a small brand doesn't mean you compromise the values of the outcomes. Every Rand, whether from a small or large budget, has the same value. You just have an informed choice on how to use it smarter.

With Black Friday around the corner, there is so much media clutter to consider when planning Black Friday advertising. Brands have seen amazing results from Black Friday advertising, but did their TV ads really drive the site traffic or was it the general Black Friday frenzy?

Every brand is looking for that bold, stand out, impactful TV advert that is going to set them apart from the rest. But how much impact can you make with your 30-second advert when you're one of 11 ads flighted during a break in a prime time show?

Brands will only know the real impact their campaign had if they use TV attribution software to track the performance of the campaign to help them make data-driven decisions for the next year's campaign or any other campaigns that run in between.  

For more information, visit www.dcmn.com. You can also follow DCMN on Facebook, Twitter or on Instagram.