NewMediaMetrics has morphed into LEAP Media Investments, a new company that now sells marketers audiences at scale across online, social and mobile using its now patented Emotional Attachment technology.
The company will also create scaled audiences for marketers based on their attachment to media properties and programming on television geared to specific networks. And its data can also be used by the TV networks to grow their viewership by marketing their programming to specific audiences that have indicated an emotional attachment to a particular network or show on that network.
NewMediaMetrics, cofounded in 2004 by Gary Reisman and Denise Larson, was a strategic marketing and analytics company that helped marketers increase the performance of their media investments by supplying them with data based on TV viewers’ emotional attachment to programming and shows, and tying viewers’ emotional attachments to brands with those networks and shows.
The new LEAP Media Investment not only adds online, mobile and social platforms to the mix, but through strategic alliances with several tech companies has created a system where a larger sample can be projected; it can also now sell those emotionally attached digital audiences to its clients.
“NewMediaMetrics was primarily a planning tool,” says Reisman, who is the new company’s CEO. “LEAP Media Investment not only helps our clients find the specific emotionally attached audiences they want to target, but we also help them activate their buys. We’ve also aligned the ability to reach emotionally attached audiences across different media platforms, including digital, on a scale basis.”
LEAP Media Investments has a strategic partnership with WPP-owned I-Behavior, a data and analytics company that aggregates transaction-level purchase data to create predictive profiles of consumers and audience segments.
It is also partnering with e-Rewards, the permission-based digital data collection and reporting company, and with Clearstream, a video-streaming targeting company that will sell the LEAP Emotionally Attached audiences through its demand-side platforms. Clients can also use the LEAP data and make their buys through their own agency trading desks.
“We really believe the ad marketplace is moving to audience buying, so we can now help them find those audiences wherever they are,” Reisman says. “Today, content is becoming secondary as a buying tool. Marketers need to reach the right audiences regardless of the content they are consuming.”
“This new digital offering is the logical evolution of our work but really revolutionary to our industry, which is quickly moving to audience targeting beyond demos, behavioral targeting and other forms of current and somewhat limiting targeting techniques,” says Larson, president of LEAP Media Investment. “In this increasingly digital world, brand-specific networks can be created, bought and sold.
“At NewMediaMetrics, we always measured emotional attachment on a more individual basis. Our new system allows us to aggregate model audiences and scale them for marketers wanting to target the right audiences digitally,” Larson adds. “We’ve been helping marketers plan, now we’re also helping them activate those plans.”
Three-Category Approach
The LEAP system offers three categories of scaled, digital audiences—Brand Loyalist, Brand Conquest and Brand Expansion.
Those in the Brand Loyalist category are the highest emotionally attached to a brand, network or program. They are the best prospects for marketers. They buy their brands more often, are less sensitive to price, pay two-and-a-half times more attention to a brand’s ads, contribute 47.2% more to its sales and are 43% more likely to discuss a brand.
Those in the Brand Conquest category have a moderate attachment to a brand, network or program. Reaching them with reinforcing messages can convince them to become even more attached to a brand.
Those in the Brand Expansion category are least emotionally attached to a brand, network or program, meaning they can be won over but they can also be lost to competitors. This is the category of consumers a brand can lose if it doesn’t develop some type of attachment.
In its initial presentation to clients, LEAP Media Investments used some examples of the number of consumers in each category by a sampling of different brands that can be reached online, via mobile or social.
In the Brand Loyalist category for Pepsi, the scaled audience of emotionally attached consumers numbers 16.4 million. The Brand Conquest category is made up of 24 million consumers, while the Brand Expansion category includes 22.5 million consumers.
For General Mills’ brand Cheerios, the Brand Loyalist category includes 8.8 million consumers; the Brand Conquest category includes 15.6 million; and the Brand Expansion includes 38.1 million.
For Johnson & Johnson’s Listerine, the Brand Loyalist category includes 8 million consumers; the Brand Conquest category includes 19.3 million; and the Brand Expansion category includes 56.7 million consumers.
For Burger King, the Brand Loyalist category includes 23.2 million consumers; the Brand Conquest category, 33.2 million; and the Brand Expansion category, 34.8 million consumers.
Ford has 26.4 million Brand Loyalists and 12.8 Brand Loyalists for its Fusion model. Toyota has 19.3 million Brand Loyalists and 15.1 million Brand Loyalists for its Camry model.
TV networks can also use LEAP data to target its most loyal or potential viewers. LEAP data finds that among the most emotionally attached TV viewers across all platforms, 46% view their favorite network more often than any others; 40% are more engaged in the shows they watch on that network; 57% view that network’s shows on DVR or VOD; and 41% socialize while watching the network they are most emotionally attached to.
Reisman says marketers can also use this data to extend their TV network buys online.
As an example of consumer emotional attachment to TV networks, the LEAP presentation shows that TNT has 11 million Brand Loyalists; another 13.3 million are in the Brand Conquest category, while 35.4 million are in the Brand Expansion category.
Adult Swim has 9.9 million consumers in the Brand Loyalist category, 14.9 million in the Brand Conquest category and 13.9 million in Brand Expansion.
For the just-completed NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament on TNT, 35.4 million consumers fell into the Brand Loyalist category, 13.9 million in the Brand Conquest category and 39.3 million in the Brand Expansion category.
Reisman says LEAP can also produce consumer emotional attachment data at scale for myriad movies, sporting events and major TV specials. And it can offer scaled emotional attachment data tying in social networks with brands.
Larson adds that as marketers are getting more serious about digital spending, there is more pressure to make the right audience buys. “The more they spend, the more pressure there is for them to produce results,” she says.
Reisman is talking to a number of different marketers and networks, and some campaigns using the LEAP Media Investments data could be getting off the ground as soon as next month. And the timing for the rollout is right, with the media upfront buying and selling period set to begin in just over a month from now.
