Sharing the Credit

TransUnion Interactive uses Google TV Ads to maximize all of its television spend

Lucy Duni, vice president of marketing at TransUnion Interactive, the consumer arm of one of the “big three” credit-reporting agencies in the U.S., knows the increasing value of giving customers reliable credit information they can use. “Our goal is to be a trusted friend and advisor – someone that helps you manage and maintain healthy credit,” she says. She also understands the importance of staying on the cutting edge of direct response marketing, which is why TransUnion Interactive was one of the earliest adopters of Google TV Ads.

Reaching out to Consumers

In 2002, TransUnion acquired TrueCredit.com, a website that offers consumers one convenient place to get unlimited access to all of their credit information. Lucy and her team, charged with increasing brand awareness and bringing new customers to TrueCredit.com, pursued a combination of direct response television ads, search, display and email marketing.

To drive their customer acquisition strategy, TransUnion Interactive historically spent a considerable portion of its TrueCredit.com marketing budget on television. “It has proven to be a powerful medium for achieving our marketing objectives,” says Lucy. When she heard that Google was entering the television advertising space, she jumped at the chance to test Google TV Ads, which allows marketers to use the Google AdWords digital interface to create and manage a traditional TV campaign. With a few clicks of the mouse, users can upload ads, set a budget, and choose when and where their ads air across 95 cable television networks. “Google TV Ads was a great fit for us because we were already involved with TV advertising and this system gave us new ways to measure our efforts,” Lucy says.

Small Test, Big Impact

Lucy and her team sought to elevate their metrics-driven approach to television advertising by utilizing the data provided by this new platform. The Google TV Ads system enabled them to access new tuning metrics based on second-by-second data from millions of anonymized set-top boxes. With the help of TargetCom, a direct response agency, TransUnion Interactive set up a Google TV Ads campaign for TrueCredit.com that mirrored their larger TV buy and waited for the data to roll in. Audience retention was of particular interest to TransUnion Interactive, and with Google TV Ads, Lucy and her team could know for any given ad airing exactly what percentage of the audience watched their ad all the way to the end.

“While in the past we measured uplift in signups on our website to get an idea of our TV campaign’s impact, we were interested in going further and learning what specific networks were retaining audiences,” Lucy says. The tuning data provided some interesting learnings. “Because our customer base is slightly skewed towards men,” explains Lucy, “we were surprised to learn that our ads outperformed on female-oriented networks such as Lifetime.” Leveraging the flexibility of the Google system, TransUnion Interactive added new networks, which had a similar audience composition to Lifetime, to their campaign. “It was so easy to expand and adjust TrueCredit’s media plan for optimal performance,” Maureen Winston, an account executive at TargetCom comments. But they didn’t stop there. TransUnion Interactive adjusted their larger television buy based on some of the new insights. “With the leanings we gain from Google TV Ads, we can make all of our television spend more efficient and effective,” Lucy says.

Tuning Into New Insights

Why and when audiences tune away from an ad, was another question on the TransUnion Interactive team’s mind. Most of TrueCredit’s ad spots showed low tune out rates, but every now and then they would come across some unusual data. One of TransUnion Interactive’s creative approaches was to air two 15 second ads back-to-back. “The tune-out data showed an unexpected increase in people tuning out at the start of the second 15 second spot,” Maureen recalls. The tune-out data led the team to re-evaluate its strategy. “We’ve stopped airing back-to-back commercials,” Lucy reports, “and are looking forward to using the Google metrics to continually improve our methodology.”

Knowing the Score

“It’s really been helpful to have these metrics behind our decisions,” Lucy says. “And it’s been great to work with TargetCom; they’ve been an invaluable partner to us and allowed us to really get meaningful insights out of all this data. As a company, we want to make sure that every thing we do is accountable, and Google TV Ads has enabled us to measure advertising in completely new ways that have driven positive results.”