Comedy a Special Case?

Beginning on August 1, exposure to promotions for each of the major networks’ new Fall shows was captured by IMMI panelists. In addition to ads, exposure to other television, radio, and theatrical media was noted.

The resulting data set is being analyzed to understand the advertising effectiveness of each network’s Fall campaign. 

One of the surprising early indications is how different the effects of promotion are for dramas and comedies.

Gross Impressions is the total number of promos experienced by all the IMMI panel members.  Frequency is  the number of times the average Panel Member saw a particular promo.  Clearly each Panel Member saw the promos for dramas many more times than they did the promos for comedies. 

Conversion perhaps partly reflects this disparity.  Conversion is the number of panel members who saw the promo for a show and then saw the show.  Conversion was higher for dramas (9.8% of the panel members who saw the promo then went on to see that drama) than it was for comedies (6.5%).  Maybe not surprising given the difference in levels of promotion for the two program types. 

It’s the last number that surprises.  Lift is calculated using percentages to estimate the effectiveness of a promo independent of how heavy the promotion is.  Lift indicates how much a promo increased the audience of a show over what would have been expected with no promotion.  Comedies did not get the lift from promotion that drama and reality shows did.  (Note:  The high conversion and lift numbers for the reality shows may not be directly comparable to the other show types because two of the reality shows were returning shows rather than new premieres.)  

These data and several other IMMI analyses indicate that comedy promotion may be quite different from promotion of dramas. It is  generally less effective overall, but, unlike drama campaigns, seems to succeed in other day parts as well as primetime.  Comedies may also be a good type of show to promote cross channel.  These observations are being investigated further.