Target Rating

I used to rely on my “gut feeling” in advertising. But then I realized that real success is in the ability to read the language of numbers, especially when it comes to TRP. It shows how many people you need will see your ad – without unnecessary expenses and guesswork.

Glossary

• 🎯TRP (Target Rating Point) – Target Rating Point. This is a metric that measures the overall rating of an advertising campaign among your target audience. TRP shows what percentage of the target audience will see your advertising message if the ad is shown a certain number of times. The higher the TRP, the greater the potential reach of your ad among the people you need. TRP helps you plan advertising campaigns, evaluate their effectiveness, and optimize your advertising budget to achieve maximum impact on your target audience.

• 🎯Target Rating – A metric similar to a regular rating (GRP - Gross Rating Point), but focused solely on the target audience. Instead of showing the overall reach of all viewers or users, the target rating shows how effectively the ad reaches the people you want to attract. The target rating is calculated to understand how accurately an advertising campaign is aimed at the desired demographic group, interests, or behavior.

• 🎯Reaching the target audience – The number of people from your target group who saw your ad at least once. TRP helps you estimate the potential reach of your target audience before launching an advertising campaign. High reach means that your message has reached a large number of potential customers. Reach is an important factor in the success of an advertising campaign, especially when the goal is to increase brand awareness or launch a new product.

• 🎯Advertising budget – The amount of money allocated by the company to conduct advertising activities. TRP helps optimize the advertising budget, allowing you to more accurately plan advertising placement and select channels that provide maximum coverage of the target audience with a given budget. Using TRP allows you to avoid ineffective expenses and direct funds to the most promising advertising platforms.

• 🎯Internet advertising – Advertising that is placed on the Internet on various platforms, such as websites, social networks, search engines and mobile applications. TRP in online advertising is measured and calculated slightly differently than on television due to the specifics of digital platforms. On the Internet, such metrics as impressions, clicks and unique user reach are often used, which together help to estimate TRP for online campaigns. It is important to consider that in online advertising, audience targeting is often more precise than on television, which allows TRP to be used more effectively to reach specific target groups.

• 🎯TV – A traditional media channel for advertising. TRP in TV advertising is measured based on the ratings of TV shows and programs watched by the target audience. Television remains a powerful channel for reaching a mass audience, but, unlike online advertising, targeting on TV is less detailed. TRP on TV helps advertisers choose the most appropriate TV channels and time to place ads in order to maximize their impact on the target audience. The differences in measuring TRP between TV and the Internet are due to different data collection methods and characteristics of the media channels.

TRP: What is this beast and how to tame it in advertising

Are you familiar with the situation when you launch an advertising campaign, like shooting a cannon at sparrows? The budget flies away like autumn leaves from the branches, and the desired result is a cat's cry. Or maybe you have ever asked yourself: "How do I understand how many people from my target audience will even see my ad?" This is where the mysterious, at first glance, term TRP, or Target Rating Point, comes into play.

And I admit, when I first encountered these three letters, there was a slight chaos in my head. Target rating? Something from the realm of cosmic dimensions? To me, then a novice marketer, it seemed something incredibly complex and inaccessible. I remember how at one of the first meetings with a client, the owner of a small online store of home goods, this very TRP was mentioned. He, Alexey, enthusiastically talked about plans to launch a large-scale advertising campaign on television.

"We need to capture maximum TRP among housewives aged 25-45!" he said with the confidence of a seasoned advertiser.

And I sat there and felt like a student at an exam where the question was apparently asked in the wrong language. "TRP... TRP..." was spinning around in my head. While Alexey was writing out budgets and channels, I was frantically googling on my phone, trying to somehow grasp the essence of this incomprehensible abbreviation. Fortunately, my experienced colleague noticed my confusion and later, in the smoking room, explained to me in simple language what was what.

It turns out that everything is not as scary as it seemed at first. TRP is, in essence, a measure of how many times representatives of your most desirable audience will see your ad. Imagine - you sell stylish food processors online. Your customers are modern women who value time and comfort at home. And so, TRP shows what percentage of these same women will see your ad on television during a cooking show, for example. The higher the TRP, the more chances you have to reach the hearts and wallets of your customers.

It's like if you decided to have a sale in your online store and wanted to know how many of your regular customers would receive an invitation email. TRP in advertising is pretty much the same thing, only on a much larger scale and taking into account the specifics of different advertising channels.

Why is TRP so important? Because it helps you avoid wasting your budget! After all, you must admit, there is no point in showing ads for children's toys in a program for amateur fishermen. TRP allows you to more accurately target your audience, choose the right advertising platforms and channels and, as a result, get the maximum return on every euro invested.

Remember that same Alexey with his online store. After that meeting, when I figured out the TRP, we approached the campaign planning together in a completely different way. Instead of blindly placing ads everywhere, we carefully analyzed the ratings of different TV channels and programs among housewives aged 25-45. It turned out that some "women's" channels do not have such a high TRP for our target audience, but morning cooking shows on a seemingly "men's" channel break all records. Can you imagine our surprise? It was a real insight!

Thanks to the competent use of TRP, Alexey's campaign turned out to be extremely successful. Sales of food processors skyrocketed, and Alexey himself began to look at me with respect, noting: "This is what it means - the magic of numbers in advertising!" And although there is no magic here, but there is a precise calculation and understanding of your audience, the effect sometimes really seems magical.

How to Understand TRP: Step-by-Step Guide

Why is this rating needed at all, or how TRP saves advertising budgets

Have you ever wondered why some advertising campaigns pop like a cork from champagne, while others fail with a bang, like that ill-fated New Year's fireworks that you launch, but it doesn't take off? Often the answer lies in the correct use of TRP. After all, understanding the target rating is like a navigator in the world of advertising, which helps you not to get lost in the wilds of media planning and lead your advertising ship straight to the desired island of profit.

In essence, the advertiser needs to calculate TRP for two key things: to choose the most suitable channel for advertising and to understand how effective the campaign was in the end. And here we cannot do without personal stories that vividly illustrate this importance.

One day, the owner of a small online clothing boutique, let's call her Elena, approached me. She had a great selection of stylish items for young girls, but sales left much to be desired. Elena had already tried targeted advertising on social networks, contextual advertising, but the result was weak. And then she came to me with the idea of trying advertising on television. "I want to become more visible, I want to loudly declare myself!" she said with sparkling eyes.

But television is an expensive thing, and it is especially important not to miss the mark with the choice of channel. We started with an analysis of Elena's target audience - young girls aged 18-25, living in cities, interested in fashion and trends. Then we asked the advertising agency for projected TRPs for this audience on different TV channels in prime time. And here is where the most interesting part began.

It turned out that popular music channels, which would seem like a logical choice, do not have such a high TRP among our target audience. But entertainment channels broadcasting popular series and shows showed much better results. This was a bit unexpected, but the numbers spoke for themselves.

We decided to bet on advertising during breaks between episodes of youth series on one of the entertainment channels. And – bingo! The campaign exceeded all expectations. Elena’s site literally boiled with orders, and she herself couldn’t be happier with the increase in sales.

Target Rating: My Secret to Conquering Advertising Heights

Have you ever felt like a captain of a ship wandering in the fog? That's exactly how I felt at the beginning of my career in advertising, especially when it came to planning advertising campaigns for online stores. It would seem that there are countless tools, but how to hit the target, how to reach your customer is a mystery behind seven seals. It was then that the concept of TRP, or Target Rating Point, or, more simply,target rating.

What kind of beast is this TRP? Imagine that your advertising is an arrow, and the target audience is the target. Simply launching an arrow is not enough. It is important that it hits the target and does not fly past, wasting your efforts and budget. TRP shows how accurately and often your "arrows" - advertising messages - reach the audience you need. In simple terms, TRP is the percentage of views of your advertising by your target audience to the total size of this audience, multiplied by 100.

TRP = Number of Target Views / Target Audience Size * 100%

It may seem complicated? Let's look at an example. I remember working with a small online store of eco-cosmetics. The owner, let's call her Natalia, was full of enthusiasm, but was completely lost in the wilds of online advertising. "I launch advertising everywhere! On social networks, on beauty sites, I even ordered banners!" she complained, "but what's the point? Sales barely cover the advertising costs!" Sounds familiar, right?

What was Natalia's problem? She was shooting at sparrows with a cannon, that is, she wasted her advertising budget without focusing on her target audience - women aged 25-45, interested in natural cosmetics and a healthy lifestyle. And here TRP comes into the picture.

I suggested that she conduct a small experiment. We decided to focus on Instagram advertising. The first step was to clearly define the target audience: we narrowed it down to women aged 25-35, living in large cities, following eco-lifestyle bloggers and showing interest in organic cosmetics. Next, we developed two commercials: one more general, with an emphasis on naturalness, and the second one focusing on specific skin problems that concern our target audience (for example, acne or dry skin).

Having launched both advertising campaigns, we began to closely monitor the indicators. And this is where the magic of TRP began to manifest itself. The general video showed good numbers in terms of reach and views, but when we looked at the TRP, it became obvious that most of the views came from an audience that was not our target. These were men, teenagers, people living in regions where the delivery of eco-cosmetics was difficult. While the video focused on skin problems had a TRP three times higher! This meant that each "arrow" of this video hit the target much more accurately.

"I was simply shocked when I saw these figures!" Elena shared with me later. "It turns out that I was spending money on showing ads to people who simply don't need my cosmetics! But I could have invested this money in more effective channels!"

That's right! This is where the power of TRP lies - in the ability to evaluate the quality of advertising reach, and not just its quantity. After all, you must agree that 1000 views of your ad by people who will never buy anything from you are less valuable than 100 views from interested potential customers.

After this discovery, we completely revised Natalia's media plan. We abandoned "broad" advertising platforms and focused on channels with a high concentration of our target audience. We began to more carefully select the time of displays, the content of the platforms and even creatives, constantly measuring TRP and optimizing campaigns in real time.

The result was not long in coming. Within a month, sales of the online eco-cosmetics store increased by 40%! Elena was in seventh heaven, and I was once again convinced of the magical power of numbers, especially when it comes to TRP.

Of course, no one says that calculating TRP is a cakewalk. Data from open sources is usually insufficient for accurate calculations. Most often, you have to order special studies or turn to analytical services of advertising platforms. But trust my experience, these investments pay off a hundredfold. After all, understanding TRP allows you not to simply "drain" the advertising budget, but to invest it wisely, accurately targeting your audience and achieving maximum returns.

My steps to conquer TRP

TRP: When the numbers tell different stories – Online vs. TV comparison

Have you ever wondered why, when we launch an advertising campaign on the Internet and on TV, we, marketers, seem to operate with the same numbers, but get completely different results? I remember how, at the dawn of my career, full of enthusiasm and confidence in the magical power of the acronym TRP, I came face to face with this question. And this was, I admit, the moment when my rose-colored glasses seemed to shatter into pieces.

At that time, I was working with a young but very ambitious online clothing store.

The guys, full of creative ideas, were literally burning with desire to conquer the market. Their faith in digital was unshakable and when I suggested using television to expand our reach, I was met with, to put it mildly, skepticism. "Television? That's the last century! Our entire audience is on the Internet!" I remember how the marketing director, a young guy of about twenty-five, passionately argued with me.

But I insisted, arguing that TV still has incredible mass reach, especially for building brand awareness. We agreed on a modest budget for a test TV campaign, while simultaneously launching a large-scale digital activity. And then the fun began… We meticulously planned both campaigns, focusing on TRP. The numbers on paper looked simply magical! I was jubilant, anticipating an explosive growth in sales and universal recognition of my media planning genius.

Imagine my surprise when the reports showed... incomparable results. The online campaign, although it demonstrated the stated TRP, brought quite predictable and, frankly, not dizzying results. But TV... TV, with a supposedly similar TRP, fired off like a cannon! The traffic to the site increased, calls from new clients did not stop, the warehouse was bursting at the seams, not having time to ship orders. What happened? Did I really miss something? Or does the magic of television really exist?

At that moment, it became obvious: the simple mechanical comparison of TRP on the Internet and on television - this is to dig deeper, understand the nature of these metrics and take into account the specifics of each platform.

On television, it became clear to me from long conversations with media and analysts, TRP measures the total rating of the programs that our target audience was watched. It is precisely the viewing when the viewer is consciously or background, but is in contact with the content for a long time so that the advertising message could be perceived.

And on the Internet, everything is much more blurry and depends on the platform, the format of the analytics system for banner advertising can simply be considered a banner on the page, even if the user has not noticed and did not have a page for the video. ry, and not for real contact with an advertising message of the target audience.

The difference, as they say, compare “warm” with “soft” - this is what we just tried to compare the TRP online and on TV.

It was then that it became obvious that TRP is not an absolute value, but rather an index showing the potential coverage of the target audience on a particular platform.

I remember how after this “failure” (although, in fact, the TV campaign was superusary, but the initial expectations from TRP were misleading), we sat down with the website of the online store at the negotiations and laid out everything in the shelves The skepticism of the marketing director melted like smoke.

As a result, we have adjusted the strategy, began to interpret the TRP numbers for each platform more competently and the results were not long in coming.

My personal experience: comparing TRP online and TV in practice

Frequently asked questions on the topic target rating

Gratitude for reading and immersion in the topic!

Now TRP in your hands!

Zinaida Rumyantseva, independent expert Elbuz

P.S. Share your opinion in the comments!