Before launching its first-ever brand campaign, Virgin Velocity had to convince finance and commercial teams that investing in brand would drive long-term demand, re-engage its 10m members – and ultimately power growth. So it tapped Beatgrid, the same cross-media measurement platform used by Virgin Australia when relaunching its airline brand.
Beatgrid’s audience measurement system uses a passive, single source panel – via an opt-in mobile phone-based app – that uses subtle audio pitch shifts to the ad creative to determine which channel the audience was exposed to. That means it can detect if an ad has been seen and how many times per user across different screens and channels – with total recall because it’s not relying on humans to remember what they saw, when and how accurately. It also enables an accurate read on cross-channel incremental reach.
For Velocity’s GM of Member Engagement, Emma King, demonstrating the panel’s robustness via control groups meant she could prove incrementality and unlock the media budget. It’s also given Velocity and their media partner PHD, a sharper insight on which channels deliver the highest growth per campaign and cumulatively across campaigns – and where the best balance of effectiveness and efficiency lies.
Beatgrid’s data also threw up some surprises. “In one example, we saw total TV drive a lift of 11 points. And when we tease out the impact of BVOD, we can see it drives an incremental result of three points above TV,” says PHD Head of Research, Lillian Zrim – counter to the narrative of declining audiences and effectiveness.
Velocity’s King says Beatgrid’s data also enabled her to justify investing in other brand channels. “We saw television work really well with out-of-home to drive incremental KPI results. If you have a lot of overlap in reach, sometimes you’re thinking - maybe we don’t need to cover both; then you see results like this that say [if someone’s exposed to both channels], they’re going to get a much higher lift.”
While King and Zrim acknowledge that nothing happens in a vacuum, “In April, our CEO confirmed that member growth trend was 35 per cent above the growth trend the previous year,” says King. “So that's an example of the kind of commercial impact that these kinds of campaigns can have.”
