TV remains the most powerful medium for brands looking to get their message out, and if your product or service is available to customers in the Republic of Ireland, Irish TV can add many benefits to your overall marketing mix. Additional reach, a higher share of voice and more accessible peak programme buying are just some of the potential upsides from exploring this approach.
In 2017, TV reached on average 65% of Ireland’s population daily, almost 85% across a week and close to 97% in a month. With a universe of 3.5m adults, that’s an additional 7% more of adults within television households that can be reached on top of the UK and Northern Ireland’s combined 51m universe.
Irish airtime is accessible at low spends across all dayparts, due to the smaller universe and impacts comparable to the UK. Furthermore, access to top programming is often being bought without a premium. To put this into context, a 30-second peak Channel 4 spot in ‘24hours in A&E’ would cost c.£20k in the UK and c.£700 in Ireland!
Airtime is planned and bought in a very similar way to UK TV; by means of CPTs (costs per thousands) to buy impacts across different saleshouses and stations. Nielsen TAM is the research panel used to measure programme impacts, like BARB in the UK. Instead of the UK’s saleshouses ITV, C4 and Sky, Ireland has Virgin Media (similar to ITV), Medialink (C4), Sky Media Ireland and RTE (similar to BBC) – broadcasting all favourite flagship programmes from Coronation Street to Gogglebox and everything else in between.
Expanding into the Irish TV market has proved to be successful for several clients. TripAdvisor have benefitted from a higher Ireland share of voice with regards to competitors at comparable TV market spends. Only two of their core competitors advertise in Ireland, as opposed to a cluttered UK market with more than six core competitors. Visit Orlando saw a 122% increase in all sessions and a 47% jump in direct sessions the week we launched on Irish TV. This has continued to increase as we built up the frequency, as shown in the graph below:
All Response Media Viewpoint
Irish TV is a great way to drive both direct response and brand awareness, having all the advantages of TV advertising in the UK, just in a different region! In terms of planning and buying, our ARMalytics® platform is used in exactly the same way, enabling us to attribute, plan, optimise and develop plans and airtime based on individual client KPIs.
Key considerations for launching a campaign in the Irish market;
- Conversion rates: Irish TV is bought (and usually billed) in Euros, therefore exchange rates need to be taken into consideration.
- The creative: the call to action on the creative should point to the relevant Irish URL, with “i.e.” as opposed to “.co.uk” if not using a universal domain (.com or .agency). It is also worth considering a regional accent for the voiceover.
- Digital activity: TV is often supported and enhanced by digital activity, therefore it is worth considering options here. For example, brand PPC terms.
UK ‘spill over’ – a small number of UK stations (predominantly Sky) ‘opt in’ to air their content and spots in the Republic of Ireland. If you are buying UK TV across these specific stations there could be a maximum of 5% of your UK TV plan impacts being delivered additionally in Ireland, therefore one to bear in mind depending on your UK station mix.
