• by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, October 10, 2012

As more marketers ink ad deals for video across all platforms from TV to digital, they’ll look for proof points on how to make the two mediums work effectively. Online ad platform Collective released a new “playbook” with detailed case studies  on how a range of advertisers are applying targeting technologies to multiplatform buys that span TV, online, mobile and other forms of video.

Given the expected rise in digital video ad dollars  – Zenith Optimedia said last week that online video ad spend should grow 29% this year and 29% next year in part because of cross-platform deals - it’s worth diving into some examples of how the two mediums can best work in tandem.

Now, let’s get the usual caveat out of the way. Collective’s ad platform helps marketers extend TV buys using set-top box data, so the company has a vested interested in the success of ad targeting across mediums.

Collective has worked with more than 50 brands in categories including consumer packaged goods, auto, retail, finance, travel and telecom. In analyzing a sampling of those campaigns, Collective found that the TV-only portion of a campaign drove a 60% lift in purchase consideration. When TV was combined with targeted online buying, the lift hit 78%. That’s a good rise, but the real eye-popping numbers emerge when cost is factored in. Digital buys are less expensive and often more efficient than TV buying, so when cost was layered in, TV’s efficiency rose two to five times. Also, when comparing a media mix of medium TV/heavy online compared to heavy TV/no online, the efficiency can rise 17 times from $11.63 (cost per impression) to $203.80 (cost per impression), said Justin Evans, senior VP of Emerging Media at Collective.

“We can create predictive targets based on what consumers are watching on TV so we can help marketers make the digital part work with the TV part better. You can seek out and find the people who have only seen an ad a few times on TV and make sure they see digital ad,” he explained.

In a case study for a Fortune 500 marketer, the brand reached an additional 1.6 million people in its target demo online who were missed via the TV buy. Here’s how: the brand achieved about 70% of its reach goals via TV, but that still caused it to miss more than 30 million potential customers. Collective analyzed the TV schedule and paired that with targeting tools to find online viewers who were least likely to watch the programs, networks and dayparts the advertiser was reaching on TV.

The result was that 74% of the unique audience reached online had either not been exposed or were only lightly exposed to the TV campaign. Overall, that translated into the advertiser being nearly four times more likely to reach its audience goals using the multiplatform combo.