New research carried out by B&A on behalf of RTÉ.ie shows its positioning in the market and identifies four key audience demographics – Sharing Connectors, News Junkies, Hectic Catch-Ups and Lifestyle Seekers.
According to the research, the Sharing Connectors have a broad demographic representation and are the original content sharers and creators who derive the most benefit from digital media. For their part News Junkies are generally male professionals who are confident with digital media and heavy news, sport and business users. Young Hectic Catch-Ups, meanwhile, are mainly urban social media users who are highly likely to be on mobile devices, snacking web content and devouring video on demand. Finally, Lifestyle Seekers are generally digital media novices interested in Lifestyle Entertainment content who tend to be older and female.
According to Conor Mullen, commercial director, RTÉ Media Sales – Digital, “A first in the Irish digital space, the study has initiated a redesign of RTÉ.ie, unveiled a finely targeted segment led strategy for the brand and a digital audience engagement programme – which has resulted in 340% growth in new user registrations over the course of the year to October 2015. This body of work was also the proud recipient of the Excellence in Data Analytics award at the Marketing Society Research Excellence Awards 2015.”
He says the research confirmed RTÉ.ie is the most used website ahead of other Irish-based media sites and major international publishers (on a weekly basis) and the average visit duration is considerably higher than RTÉ.ie’s domestic competitors at 5.57 minutes.
Commenting on the research, Ian McShane, managing director at B&A said “To my mind, the RTÉ.ie project represents the perfect case study in client/agency collaboration. Based upon a number of core research insights, driven by B&A’s Behavioural Analysts, the RTÉ team developed an all-encompassing, cross-platform digital strategy, the results of which have already begun to materialise.”
Separately, B&A conducted research to measure the effectiveness of advertising on RTÉ Player – measuring the advertiser’s brand equity, as opposed to mere awareness levels alone.
According to B&A, an initial base-line survey (the pre survey) was conducted to measure effectiveness in advance of a series of brands being advertised. This was followed by a post brand advertising effectiveness survey. Both surveys contained a series of questions in relation to a number of RTÉ Player advertiser brands, both before and after the campaign. The same questions were asked of respondents at the pre and post survey.
All participants were demographically controlled in accordance with the broader population, as identified by way of an annual nationwide Establishment Survey, combined with Government population statistics. All respondents were pre-selected and invited to take part in the Ad-Effectiveness survey based on the qualifying criteria (i.e. Regular and consistent RTÉ Player users over the past 3 month period). Prior to the post survey, respondents clicked on each of two links to specific programmes (incorporating 4 ad campaigns) and watched the pre-roll advertisements before the content.
“The research demonstrates marked effects on perceptions of all 4 of the brands that were advertised on RTÉ Player. In each case, there were increases in nearly all twenty brand values between the pre-wave (control) and post-wave (following exposure to the campaigns on RTÉ Player). The study displays a very significant competitive advantage for RTÉ Player over other VOD services, particularly on perceptions of Irishness, Value, Real, Trust, Fair and Community,” says Conor Mullen.
