Opportunity To See
Opportunity to See (OTS) is a term used in marketing and media planning to monitor the success of advertising.
OTS definition
Opportunity to See indicates how often, on average, a person has come into contact with a certain advertising medium. Along with the Gross Rating Point (GRP) and other data, the OTS is used to measure the success of advertising campaigns.
In the media planning process, it is not only the content, budget and choice of advertising media that is important, but also a review of the campaign in retrospect. The advertising success monitoring is carried out based on various KPIs. The OTS value serves to determine average contacts between the advertising media and the recipient.
How to calculate OTS
The OPS can be calculated as follows: The net reach is the number of persons reached once. The gross reach is the number of persons reached regardless of the number of times the ad has been shown. The OTS value is obtained by dividing the gross reach by the net reach.
Example
Net reach: 1,000 people have seen a commercial or ad at least once.
Gross reach contacts: 5,000 contacts comprise the number of all recipients. If one divides 5000 by 1000, one gets the value of the average contacts = 5 OTS.
Contact distribution, which shows how the target group is composed with regard to contact classes, has to be distinguished from this. The advertising industry generally assumes that seven to twelve contacts per target person are ideal. This is referred to as advertising awareness (the number of persons in a target group who remember a specific advertisement) in this context, whereby values between 7 and 12 can usually only be achieved by a combination of different advertising media.
Depending on the advertising medium, the average number of contacts can be lower without missing a specific campaign target. For example, the OTS values for radio are much lower with about 4 contacts per week per person. The time factor is, in this case, more important than the number of absolute, long-term contacts.
Advantages of OTS
Advertising depends on the attention of the audience. It is believed that repetitions of ads or commercials generate a greater amount of attention. By selecting the average contact per person, the OTS value is a means to measure the attention which has been generated at least roughly. Depending on the campaign goals, the focus can be placed on a certain period of time. In particular, print media measures advertising success based on regular showings or with regard to a certain output.
OTS values can be used to increase the visibility of a young brand. First-time advertising is intended to promote a brand or a product on the market and commit it to the memory of the recipients through repetitions. OTS values can be used to implement branding actions and to introduce new brands or products. In all cases, this KPI serves to measure the success of the campaigns and may be used to define the number of average contacts or frequency of ad showings or placements so that the desired success occurs.
Relevance to SEO
The value of average contacts is not an SEO statistic, but can be reviewed analogously to page visits. If the number of visits to a website correspond to the net reach, the gross reach is the total traffic of the Website. The OTS value would then most likely correspond to the number of page visits. After all, a website is just another advertising medium.
However, the experiences and KPIs that are collected in advertising research cannot be transposed to the Internet one-to-one. User behavior on the Internet is generally different from the handling of print media. A media mix is recommended, which differentiates the different advertising media and carriers with regard to their aims and effects.
In order to influence the rate of contact with an advertising medium on the Internet, media planners can utilize their entire internet advertising repertoire, including affiliate marketing, local SEO, and much more. The various web analytics tools provide more analysis capabilities than OTS or GRP.