Cox Media + Audience-Based Advertising Solutions for Television

In previous articles and webinar recordings, we introduced the concept of audience-based ad buying. In this blog, we take that a step further by connecting this topic to how Cox Media can help make audience-based solutions part of your advertising campaign.

Audience-based solutions allow television to be planned and evaluated more like digital – and the resulting focus on impressions creates an equalizer across both digital and traditional media platforms.

Audience-based solutions also allow advertisers to reach their customers wherever they may consume media. Digital advertising is known for its ability to “target” audiences, and the linear television side of Cox Media’s business – meaning the 30-second commercials, or “spots” that we have available to sell on nearly 70 cable networks across our markets – can provide targeting and audience-based solutions too.

This all starts with data.

Cox Media leverages internal and external data in our audience-based solutions for linear television. The major data component is access to our parent company Cox Communications’ proprietary set-top box (STB) viewership data, which is collected from our video subscribers’ set-top boxes each day and shows which networks the household watched and for how long. The data is anonymized and aggregated so our subscribers’ information remains private. Our STB viewership data indicates the viewing habits of the thousands of video subscribers in each Cox market.

This allows our Cox Media teams to provide more consultative and more effective TV planning by focusing on actual viewership trends directly linked to consumer demographic and interest data from sources like Experian, L2, Cox Automotive, and IHS/Polk. These extensive data sets go beyond the basic demographics of age and gender. Attributes such as income, education, interest in fitness, voting history, and auto search history and ownership can be applied to our subscribers’ households to help understand TV viewing tendencies across a wide range of advanced audience segments and reveal a greater variety of networks where our clients’ audiences are watching.

Putting these three pieces together lets Cox Media help our clients define their customer and identify networks the target audience watches based on our subscribers’ viewership. 

Here’s an example: To show a Tulsa Ford truck dealership what their potential customers are watching, we can use IHS/Polk’s automotive data to create a target audience that includes the attribute “likely to purchase a full-size pickup truck.” When this attribute is matched against our Tulsa STB viewership data, we see that a network like the Outdoor Network ranks high in viewing with this target, but, surprisingly, so does a network like Animal Planet. The STB data presents the client with a data-informed opportunity to reach their audience on networks where they wouldn’t expect to find them.

By leveraging data, audience-based solutions for television and the platforms we use to enable is transforming how we develop advertising campaigns for our clients. For Cox Media, data is the differentiator, especially when it comes to knowing and serving our audience.

Interested in learning more about how audience-based solutions can be integrated into your TV advertising campaigns? Fill out the form on the right side of this page to connect with one of our team members.