Why ABC and Brands Are Winning Bachelor in Paradise

I have never watched Bachelor in Paradise and I won't. I don't judge you if you do. And I don't have to watch it to know ABC has done a great job of exploiting a "reality" narrative that gets people hooked. It gives advertisers a way to insert a brand message into the emotional journey. Sure, it's a show about hooking up. But people like that. Actually it stirs a slew of feelings.According to Canvs, the emotional analytics company--- an analysis of more than 200k emotional tweets about the show reveal a mix of feelings that remind me of, well, dating.  That kind of content and emotional connection does a few things really well. Lets be real, linear programming is skewing older and older, and this show draws younger female audiences. At least that is the prevailing assumption when the show is green-lit.Using data from iSpot.tv, the attention and conversion analytics platform for TV advertising, we can use measurement taken from the glass of millions of smart TVs to back up the assumptions and get a real look at the ROI. Never mind that the show was able to generate more than a billion TV impressions, the quality of the impressions-- measured in terms of time and attention, and ability to hit the core demo-- is phenomenal. And those younger, ad-skippers who tend to watch on VOD, OTT, Hulu or what have you are more likely to time shift in greater numbers. The cliff-hanger nature of the programming is well designed to keep people from switching the channels, which in turn results in better view rates and completion rates (which iSpot.tv measures from the time an ad spent on the glass). Digging into the completion rates and TV impression rates shows something just as exciting for ABC advertisers: 85 of the 193 brands saw ad completion rates over 90%.  For brands such as TJ Maxx, Fruit of the Loom, and Nature Valley which all posted above 97% completion rates that is very very good news. It doesn't get much better than that.