Giving AMC Networks actionable insight on their on-air promotional strategy and how best to support different types of content

AMC Networks’ mission is to be the premier destination for passionate and engaged fan communities around the world with entertainment that stands out, drives popular culture and fuels our growth.

AMC create and curate celebrated series and films across distinct brands and make them available to audiences everywhere.

Challenge

AMC Networks required a clear strategy, accompanied by a set of actionable guidelines, for best using promos to support different types of content.  To maximise return on promo airtime, AMC needed to evaluate promo campaign performance and quantify the proportion of programme audience attributable to the support received; therefore, AMC wanted actionable recommendations and specific planning guidelines for future promotional activity.

Solution

We combined AMC’s own promo logs, detailing when and where a campaign aired, with Nielsen AMRLD files for all campaigns across a 9-month period. Respondent-level data enabled us to identify the viewers that were exposed to promos and then track how many also watched the target programme, thus creating a basic measure of conversion (or viewer overlap). Further benchmarking techniques separated the natural conversion of viewers who would have watched the programme even if they hadn’t seen a promo. This created a campaign uplift measure – the true measurable effect of the promo campaign.

We segmented AMC’s audience into groups (by volume and frequency of channel viewing) and summarised the size and amount of network viewing by each group. This allowed us to identify the set of viewers who are the best potential for network growth. We then analysed each promo campaign separately for each group and content type (series, movie, special) and age (new vs. returning seasons).

Analysing campaigns in quantity allowed us to group similar content together and isolate trends in promo effect. By comparing factors such as weight of campaign, reach, frequency, conversion and effect of promos, we were able to recommend the optimum parameters for conversion by content type. Similarly, by creating reach and frequency curves split by viewer group we could identify the optimum weight of campaign required to target key viewer groups.

Our analysis of over 250 pieces of promoted content was distilled into a single page of clear guidelines that set out the optimum promotion for each different campaign type. This included weight of campaign, campaign length (both optimum start date and length of support), promo distribution, and a priority order for when promo inventory is limited.

Our analysis identified where increasing campaign weight can drive more viewers to content, and where campaigns can be pulled back – or programmes can be unsupported – and maintain their audience through natural viewership.

This has allowed AMC to maximise viewing return on the promo airtime available.