True Reach & Frequency
a measurement product that enables agencies, brands, and publishers to understand the holistic reach of their advertising campaigns
Product Manager: Davina Ghivoni
Product Designer: Teresa Pesenti
Front-End Engineer: Lech Twarog
What is
True Reach & Frequency
?
TRF 2.0 is Samba’s flagship deduplicated reach and frequency measurement tool. It allows advertisers to understand the holistic reach of their entire omniscreen campaign. By combining Samba’s ACR and ID Graph, the tool unifies a brand's TV + CTV + Digital strategies into a single holistic measurement study.
What is the problem?
Viewership fragmentation, unreliable data, and campaign inefficiencies don't provide advertisers enough insight into deduplicated reach across their inventory. Samba TV's legacy reach and frequency tool needed to be updated to support more scale. This meant strengthening the tech stack to support more measurement studies, reducing internal runtimes, and streamlining internal processes. With Targeting Accuracy, Samba TV also needed to build parity for reach & frequency measurement as compared to other competitive products. Before TRF, viewership fragmentation was a common issue for advertisers because viewers consume content across different platforms and devices with no true way of measuring outcomes. Subpar data and tools lead to inaccurate targeting and measurement which leads to overspending on ads that reach people outside target audiences, or oversaturate audiences with the same ad.
The problems of True Reach & Frequency 1.0 include:
- Disparate internal systems with different methodologies
- Reports that run up to 8 hours (and then fail)
- Pre-computed dashboards that were unattractive and offered no customization
- Limited metrics and performance narratives
- Research Managers supporting a fixed number of studies - no way to scale
What was the solution?
The measurement product team at Samba TV came up with an 8-month plan to update and improve the current TRF system from a technology and user-experience perspective.
Included in this update was a new interactive dashboard design, on-the-fly filtering, simplified report set ups, flexible delivery methods, faster processing, easier troubleshooting, and refreshed methodology. The new product also includes new KPIs (On Target %, On Target Penetration) which focus on Targeting Accuracy, supporting Samba TV's vision of offering measurement against Advanced Audiences.
The benefits of True Reach and Frequency 2.0 include:
- Frequency Optimization:
Omniscreen frequency insights help optimize campaigns by pinpointing where ad exposure efficiency declines
- Omniscreen Measurement
Understand which types of devices (TV, phone, tablet, PC), TV networks, or digital publishers your campaigns are performing best
- Incremental Reach
Access omniscreen reach insights, such as digital and CTV incremental reach over linear TV-only campaigns
- Granular Insights
Filter down for advanced insights such as demographic (gender, ethnicity, age, income), or level of TV exposure (heavy viewers, cord-cutters, etc)
What was the approach?
When a major client is interested in a product and revenue is at stake, it doesn't matter how many days into the job you are - you just have to drop everything and execute.
I was briefed on this project on my second day at Samba TV and immediately dove into it head first. Being the only product designer at the company, I didn't have anyone else to fall back on and needed to prove that I was capable of tackling this on my own. I started by reading all of the documentation associated with this project and fortunately, my amazing product manager had already completed market research, personas, competitive analyses, and other user research needs prior to my hiring at Samba TV. This allowed me to conceptualize and start designing high-fidelity prototypes pretty early on in the process - which was good because we had a fairly tight deadline to meet.
I met with my product manager, engineering leaders, and internal users every week to ensure that my designs met their needs and would be able to get implemented. In parallel, I worked with front-end engineers on creating a unified design system that allowed us to have a more efficient hand-off process. Six months after I started working at Samba TV, the MVP version of TRF launched, which was a massive achievement and was met with extremely positive feedback. We were able to spend a few more months to conduct thorough a/b testing, add new features, update any design flaws, and incorporate user feedback before launching the GTM version in February of 2023.
The product lifecycle is ever-evolving and we are constantly looking for more ways to improve it, but overall the experience and the feedback I obtained from this project has been incredible and has helped me grow as a product designers in so many ways.
What is
True Reach & Frequency
?
TRF 2.0 is Samba’s flagship deduplicated reach and frequency measurement tool. It allows advertisers to understand the holistic reach of their entire omniscreen campaign. By combining Samba’s ACR and ID Graph, the tool unifies a brand's TV + CTV + Digital strategies into a single holistic measurement study.
What are some the problems that users faced prior to designing this new experience for them?
Viewership fragmentation, unreliable data, and campaign inefficiencies don't provide advertisers enough insight into deduplicated reach across their inventory. Samba TV's legacy reach and frequency tool needed to be updated to support more scale. This meant strengthening the tech stack to support more measurement studies, reducing internal runtimes, and streamlining internal processes. With Targeting Accuracy, Samba TV also needed to build parity for reach & frequency measurement as compared to other competitive products. Before TRF, viewership fragmentation was a common issue for advertisers because viewers consume content across different platforms and devices with no true way of measuring outcomes. Subpar data and tools lead to inaccurate targeting and measurement which leads to overspending on ads that reach people outside target audiences, or oversaturate audiences with the same ad.
The problems of True Reach & Frequency 1.0 include:
- Disparate internal systems with different methodologies
- Reports that run up to 8 hours (and then fail)
- Pre-computed dashboards that were unattractive and offered no customization
- Limited metrics and performance narratives
- Research Managers supporting a fixed number of studies - no way to scale
How did we solve our customers' unique challenges?
The measurement product team at Samba TV came up with an 8-month plan to update and improve the current TRF system from a technology and user-experience perspective.
Included in this update was a new interactive dashboard design, on-the-fly filtering, simplified report set ups, flexible delivery methods, faster processing, easier troubleshooting, and refreshed methodology. The new product also includes new KPIs (On Target %, On Target Penetration) which focus on Targeting Accuracy, supporting Samba TV's vision of offering measurement against Advanced Audiences.
The benefits of True Reach and Frequency 2.0 include:
- Frequency Optimization:
Omniscreen frequency insights help optimize campaigns by pinpointing where ad exposure efficiency declines
- Omniscreen Measurement
Understand which types of devices (TV, phone, tablet, PC), TV networks, or digital publishers your campaigns are performing best
- Incremental Reach
Access omniscreen reach insights, such as digital and CTV incremental reach over linear TV-only campaigns
- Granular Insights
Filter down for advanced insights such as demographic (gender, ethnicity, age, income), or level of TV exposure (heavy viewers, cord-cutters, etc)
What role did I play in the design, development, and success of this project?
When a major client is interested in a product and revenue is at stake, it doesn't matter how many days into the job you are - you just have to drop everything and execute.
I was briefed on this project on my second day at Samba TV and immediately dove into it head first. Being the only product designer at the company, I didn't have anyone else to fall back on and needed to prove that I was capable of tackling this on my own. I started by reading all of the documentation associated with this project and fortunately, my amazing product manager had already completed market research, personas, competitive analyses, and other user research needs prior to my hiring at Samba TV. This allowed me to conceptualize and start designing high-fidelity prototypes pretty early on in the process - which was good because we had a fairly tight deadline to meet.
I met with my product manager, engineering leaders, and internal users every week to ensure that my designs met their needs and would be able to get implemented. In parallel, I worked with front-end engineers on creating a unified design system that allowed us to have a more efficient hand-off process. Six months after I started working at Samba TV, the MVP version of TRF launched, which was a massive achievement and was met with extremely positive feedback. We were able to spend a few more months to conduct thorough a/b testing, add new features, update any design flaws, and incorporate user feedback before launching the GTM version in February of 2023.
The product lifecycle is ever-evolving and we are constantly looking for more ways to improve it, but overall the experience and the feedback I obtained from this project has been incredible and has helped me grow as a product designers in so many ways.
$484K
in Q1’23 TRF Revenue
Up 75% YoY
Results
TRF was incredibly successful upon launch in Q1 of 2023. Not only did it generate $484K of revenue, but Samba TV also saw a hike in its logo count with 22 unique advertisers using the platform.
A huge reason for the revamp of True Reach & Frequency was to enable internal teams to support more scale as the product becomes more and more popular. This was evident in the amount of reports the internal research managers were able to produce - an unprecedented feat before this product existed.
39 Q1 TRF Studies Delivered + 85 Study Meta Analysis for Disney Delivered
