Daypart (n): The time segments that divide the TV day for ad scheduling purposes. These segments generally reflect a television station's programming patterns. Comparison of audience estimates between dayparts may indicate differences in size and composition of available audience. – The TVB
The daypart has been around as long as television, and provides buyers and sellers with essential data to inform their content and audience targeting. Daypart consideration likely helped spawn some of advertising’s earliest media planning innovations, like using soap operas to target household products to women in the 1960s. At a certain point in time, people knew the time of day by the daypart – morning news, afternoon soaps, evening news, prime time, late night.
We all know what’s happened since then – a little thing called “the Internet” disrupted the ebb and flow of the daypart. While it continues to be an essential, critical and important part of television programming ad sales, daypart in the digital video world has more of a morphed definition.
Sightly tackled this concept recently in our Day in the Life of Performance Video infographic. Here is what we found:
People have an internal media clock, but it’s bigger than daypart alone
People use their devices to consume content throughout the day in different ways. The type of device can vary – for example, computer usage might be consistent throughout the afternoon business hours – but smartphones are still used in the overnight.
TIP: Know how to target by device throughout the 24-hour day
Performance video adds fuel to the daypart-driven plan
Dayparts are essential to video planning, and, depending on your KPI, you need to honor them. But performance video helps you extend a daypart-driven plan more deeply through getting into the in-betweens and cracks of rigid network programming. It doesn’t adhere to “early morning” or “prime time” – but consumers do apply some of these norms to their video viewing.
TIP: You need both. Don’t disregard the daypart, it still applies to
how people view video.
All the time is targeting time
All dayparts – and the times between and within those dayparts – have value. It just depends on what you want to accomplish, and the KPIs you establish. They key is to connect your brand to the right environment – a targeted audience, a specific device, a relevant time. Building those surroundings and hitting the audience with a message right for them is more important than daypart alone.
TIP: Connect brands with the targeted audiences they seek at the
moment they’re interested.
No matter the tech innovation or new media platform, some of televisions most storied basics are still incredibly germane to how advertisers succeed today: by connecting the right person at the right moment with the right message. Our toolbox to do this has expanded, but the principles are the same.
Find out how to make performance video work for your brand all day long in our new infographic.
