Tick-tock-tick-tock.....time to increase efficiency.

In the current economic environment advertisers are clawing back budgets and shouting from the rooftops about increased efficiencies & effectiveness.
The original buzzword is back with avengence: ROI.

So having exhausted all the DR channels i can find for a certain client my attention is now focusing on time targeting.

A recent study from the IAB UK claimed that advertisers are failing to target users at the time of day when they're most receptive to ad messages.
Despite day-part targeting being common practice in the planning of above-the-line advertising, with Outdoor & Radio especially, online advertisers and agencies haven't traditionally embraced the idea to its fullest extent.

A survey by the IAB and Lightspeed Research in the UK found more than half (51%) of people are more receptive to advertising after 6pm. The findings suggest advertisers that take advantage of this prime evening period to target consumers could increase campaign penetration and reduce wastage.

Obviously this is a UK survey so i did a little bit of digging around the main networks in Australia and asked them how regularly they are approached to do time targeted activity.
The answer was, suprisingly, not very often at all.

So that suggests to me that we, like the UK, could be missing a trick here....

I used to work on a big pizza brand in the UK and time targeting was their biggest strategy.
We targeted them when they were hungry (ground breaking stuff!) during lunchtimes & evenings only - getting the bang for our buck.

The food analogy is a clear standout for the utilisation of time targeting but why can't the same policy be applied to every product or service?

We can't assume that people are just as receptive to ads from financial institutions, FMCG retailers and technology companies at every second of every day even if we are in contextually relevant environments.

We think we really understand the consumer mindset when planning hence the environments we place our advertising in are so carefully thought out, but has anyone really done any research into click through rates & conversion by time of day and day of week and then actively applied those learnings?

I agree that we could be in danger of micro-planning when we start throwing in contextual placements, behavioural targeting, re-messaging & demographics as well as time targeting but i still believe that it should be a model we take a serious look at especially when it comes to increasing efficiencies for our clients during this time of lowered spending & consumption.