Hallmark Channel has become the first cable network to sign up to combine Nielsen TV, retailer and product-usage data, officials said Wednesday.
As the first cable service to license NielsenConnections Brand Target Audience products, Hallmark Channel will be able to document the impact of its programming against advertiser’s marketing targets, which will help media buyers and planners better target their client’s spending. Hallmark Channel is also the first Nielsen client to include magazines and retail in its cross-platform measurement.
NielsenConnnections’ Brand Target Audience: CPG and Brand Target Audience: Pharma products combine Nielsen’s Homescan Panel of 125,000 consumers – and is used by consumer packaged goods manufacturers and consumer packaged goods retailers in market-strategy development – with Nielsen’s national television sample and its Nielsen Online Internet sample.
“The Nielsen data will allow us to instantly show clients who is buying their products and watching Hallmark Channel,” Bill Abbott, Hallmark Channel’s executive vice president of advertising sales, said in a statement. “By providing advertisers with this targeted information, we help them realize the full economic value of their buying decisions and help them move beyond the traditional dependence on age/sex demos. Being able to more effectively reach their core customer base in this way is essential for advertisers and for the future growth of the media industry as a whole – especially during these challenging economic times.”
Nielsen will focus on three specific areas of measurement for Hallmark Channel: cross-platform reach, the spending power of homes using Homescan data and advertiser-centric single-source ratings and metrics.
First, Hallmark Channel will use Nielsen to document its reach across the multiple platforms of the Hallmark brand, including: on-air with Hallmark Channel; online with www.hallmarkchannel.com,www.hallmarkmoviechannel.com and www.hallmark.com; in retail outlets with the nearly 4,000 Hallmark Gold Crown Stores; and, in print with Hallmark Magazine and Hallmark greetings cards. Its first effort will be to track the reach of Hallmark Channel’s umbrella holiday marketing campaign, “Home for the Holidays,” across its multiple platforms and, for the first time, in Wal-Mart stores.
Second, Hallmark Channel will use Nielsen Homescan data, which tracks product purchases across key product categories, to document both the overall spending power of consumers, and to specifically address how brand loyalty differs for baby boomers – Hallmark Channel’s core audience – compared to younger households.
Third, Hallmark Channel will license NielsenConnections BTA products for the consumer products and pharmaceutical categories, which allow the evaluation of media data against the client’s key marketing targets as opposed to commonly used age and sex demographics.
In its first detailed study using these tools, Nielsen and Hallmark looked at the spending power and brand loyalty of baby boomer households for consumer packaged goods products, using Nielsen Homescan sales data.
Among the key results: Baby boomers account for nearly $230 billion in sales for consumer-packaged goods products, representing 55% of total sales. Baby boomer households share of sales is 5 points higher than their share of population.
There are over 6,500 brands measured in Homescan that have over 1% U.S. penetration. Of those brands, Baby boomers account for over 50% of sales for 72% of those brands.
For 30% of brands, brand loyalty is lower among baby boomers than it is among younger households (with the head of house age 18 to 43). For another 48% of brands, there was no difference in brand loyalty.
“The results of this study will clearly show the unique value of integrating media and consumer data to provide clients with truly comprehensive insights,” Howard Shimmel, Nielsen senior vice president of client insights, said in a statement. “This new data enables Hallmark to not only better understand its highly valuable audience, but also to document its ability to deliver these influential consumers across all of its platforms.”
