Leading automotive brands join $1 million “Payback’ study into media return on investment

ThinkTV is pleased to announce that four of the top 15 auto brands in Australia have agreed to join the second tranche of its A$1 million world-first “Payback Australia” study into media return on investment.

The automotive manufacturers will each give three years of raw campaign and sales data to Ebiquity, the leading, independent marketing analytics firm, which is carrying out the study, at arm’s length, for ThinkTV.

Commanding a combined advertising budget of more than $80 million annually, the brands are a mix of both large and smaller auto makers in order to ensure a significant and broad sample.

Results are expected in May, providing unprecedented quantitative insights into the effectiveness of the local automotive category’s $700 million-plus annual media spend.

Kim Portrate, Chief Executive of ThinkTV, said: “We know that marketers are trying to drive growth in really difficult conditions and one of the few levers to grow your business is media.

“We already know from wave one of Ebiquity’s Payback Australia study that today’s multi-platform TV leads the way in driving sales in the consumer packaged goods industry. Now we will discover how TV fares against other media for the automotive industry.”

Richard Basil-Jones, Ebiquity’s Managing Director, added: “The automotive category represented over $700 million of advertising spend across Australian main media including TV, Radio, Out of Home and Press in 2016 – the third largest category in Australia.

“In this highly competitive category, automotive advertisers are wanting to better understand what impact on sales each media channel delivers in terms of their return on investment. The next phase of the Payback Australia study will help provide those answers”.

Phase one of Payback Australia, involving advertisers such as Unilever, Pfizer and Kimberly-Clark, showed that TV creates by far the best return on investment for consumer packaged goods brands in Australia, easily beating online video, online display, radio, press, and outdoor advertising.

The independent, econometric study found that every $1 invested in TV advertising generated a return of $1.74. TV was the only media in the study that generated a positive short term revenue ROI for the nine participating FMCG brands, which collectively spend more than $200 million on advertising per annum.

Participants for phase three and four of the study, including finance participants, will be announced shortly.

About Ebiquity UK
Ebiquity is a leading independent marketing analytics specialist. It guides its clients through an ever- changing marketing landscape,
helping them optimise effectiveness and achieve business success. Ebiquity has 1,100 clients that include more than 80% of the world’s
largest advertisers. Ebiquity is the Effectiveness Partner of the World Federation of Advertisers.