Video advertising specialist YuMe has launched the YuMe Calculator, a tool for measuring the impact on the reach of an ad campaign when budget is diverted from TV to other online channels, such as online, mobile, tablet, Smart TV, games consoles, and OTT TV platforms such as Apple TV.
The Calculator takes the form of an online tool that media planners can use to alter the parameters of a campaign. You can change the overall budget, and the amount allocated to TV as opposed to digital channels. Within these digital channels, you can allocate a certain percentage to online, some to tablet, some to mobile and so on. You can then see what impact this would have on the reach of the campaign on the overall audience, or among certain age groups, or males only or females only.
In one example given by the companies, given a certain advertising budget to play with, an ad that ran on TV only in the UK would achieve a reach of 32.8 per cent. If 10 per cent of the budget is diverted to other channels – in this case, all 10 per cent going to online – that reach of 32.8 per cent rises to 33.7 per cent. If you then take the 10 per cent taken away from TV and divvy it up so online gets 4 per cent and mobile, tablet and OTT TV get 2 per cent each, the reach figure rises to 35.7 per cent.
Taking it further, if you divert 20 per cent of the TV budget to online, the reach figure rises to 36.2 per cent, and if you divvy that 20 per cent up so online gets 8 per cent and mobile, tablet and OTT TV get 4 per cent each, the reach figure rises again to 39 per cent. That’s 6.2 percentage points higher than when all the spend went on TV, or an increase in reach of 19 per cent.
The data underpinning the tool comes from an online study carried out by YuMe and research firm Nielsen among 5,125 people in five regions (roughly 1,000 in each), namely the UK, France, Germany, Spain and the Nordics.
The survey asked a number of questions relating to device ownership. For example, in the UK, 99 per cent of respondents owned a TV; 97 per cent had a PC; 68 per cent a smartphone; 46 per cent a tablet; 45 per cent a games console; and 19 per cent a Smart TV. The number of devices per household is 4.8 for the UK, compared to 4.3 for France, 4 for Germany, 5.3 for Spain, and 4.7 for the Nordics. 
The study also looked at device usage while the TV was on. The results here show that, on an EU-wide basis, 68 per cent of TV viewers are on their smartphone; 66 per cent are on a laptop; and 66 per cent also are on a tablet, with 44 per cent on a desktop PC.
“People talk about second screening, but actually, you could argue that the TV is the second screen, and that the primary device is the one in your hand,” said YuMe COO, Ed Haslam.
Another part of the study concentrated on Millennials, the 18-34 year olds who are allegedly so hard to reach via advertising. This revealed that 89 per cent of them use a connected device while watching TV, and that 44 per cent of them do so in order to access content related to what they are watching on TV.
You can access the Calculator here.
