As local TV affiliates continue to labor for daily news ratings and vie for inventory, an effective promotional campaign remains an important part of ratings success. In fact, while studies have shown that promotion drives incremental viewership, putting together an effective campaign is an essential key to maximizing both audience and revenue. Nielsen’s work with one media company— with its business across the TV, radio, Internet and mobile categories – did just that as a way to gauge the impact of a new anchor promotion on early news tune-in and understand the effectiveness of its TV promo campaign.

Resulting insights showed a campaign frequency “sweet spot” among the key 25-54 news demo. Specifically, 7-9 exposures doubled tune-in to the news, from 10 percent to 22 percent for this frequency. What’s more, people defined as viewers who normally didn’t watch this Seattle station’s early morning news programming before the campaign made up 65 percent of the total program audience after the campaign.

Other Nielsen findings included: 

• Primetime and early fringe dayparts were the best times to reach a new, potential audience.
• Over 20 percent of viewers exposed to this campaign tuned-in, while only 8.7 percent of viewers not exposed watched the program
• More isn’t always better when it comes to promo. It’s paramount for stations to find their sweet spot frequency for incremental tune-in. Beyond this frequency, stations may be able to use their inventory in more effective ways.

For more information, download the Promotional Campaign Effectiveness for Morning News case study here.