The Power of Incremental Reach in Modern Advertising

In today's dynamic media landscape, simply investing in linear TV ads leaves a significant portion of your potential audience unreached. As we've seen with the rise of "cord-cutters" (those who've dropped traditional cable) and "cord-nevers" (individuals who've never had a cable subscription, like myself!), the way people consume content has fundamentally shifted. If your strategy is solely rooted in linear advertising, you're missing out on vital connections that were once guaranteed.

The solution is clear: incremental reach measurement.

The digital marketing industry has responded to this fragmentation by developing advanced measurement tools that make the ad buying process more informed and effective. At Techne, we've built out the capability to leverage these cutting-edge tools to inform large buys and make crucial adjustments during a live campaign. By partnering with industry leaders like Nielsen ONE, Comscore, and Samba TV, we gain unparalleled insight into where your audience is truly spending their time.

Why Incremental Reach Matters Now More Than Ever

Understanding incremental reach is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. Audience fragmentation is now a reality; viewers are scattered across linear TV, streaming services (CTV), social media, and countless digital platforms. Your message needs to follow them.

Linear TV is valuable, but it's increasingly unable to deliver full audience saturation on its own. Digital advertising becomes the critical component for filling the gaps, reaching light TV viewers, younger demographics, and specific niche audiences who are simply not found on traditional linear channels. Imagine knowing precisely which digital platforms are bringing in unique, unduplicated viewers that your linear TV campaign would otherwise miss. This intelligence allows for smarter budget allocation, ensuring every dollar works harder.

How Techne Leverages Measurement Tools for Incremental Reach

At Techne, we use a sophisticated approach with these measurement partners to ensure your advertising budget is distributed as effectively as possible.

Nielsen ONE provides a comprehensive, deduplicated understanding of audiences across linear, streaming, and digital. It helps us see the true, unduplicated reach of your entire campaign, identifying exactly how many unique individuals your digital ads reached in addition to your linear TV spots. This is the bedrock of understanding true incremental value, providing a holistic view of campaign performance across publishers and platforms.

Comscore, particularly with its Campaign Ratings (CCR), allows us to measure deduplicated reach and frequency across linear TV, digital, and OTT. This helps us visualize the overlap between audiences and pinpoint the true incrementality of digital channels, enabling us to inform media buys at a deeper level than ever before.

Samba TV's Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) data from smart TVs gives us real-time insights into linear TV ad exposure at the household level. This unique capability allows Techne to identify households that have (or haven't) seen your linear TV ads and then strategically target them with digital ads on their connected devices. This directly translates to delivering measurable incremental reach by filling the gaps left by linear.

The ability to dedupe reach across linear and streaming is something Techne has meticulously built out to inform large buys and make precise adjustments while a campaign is live. The goal is always to buy strategically, with better-informed decisions that yield optimal results.

For political and advocacy efforts, reporting out on reach and frequency is paramount. But the critical question is, how often are agencies and media buyers genuinely leveraging these sophisticated measurement tools to deduplicate reach across a CTV and linear campaign?

At Techne, the answer is: always. 

We believe that informed buys aren't just a value add; they will soon be a deal-breaker. Ask yourself now: how are you measuring your linear advertising compared to digital advertising? If the answer isn't a clear, data-backed strategy for incremental reach, then how do you truly know if your budget distribution is the most effective it can be?

Techne has in-house buyers for both linear and digital. We are an unbiased agency and are looking only to improve the ad buying experience and the ecosystem at large.