Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase

The Challenges
Perceived as expensive, the low-to-mid ARPU segment had shunned Hotlink FAST. As a solution, “Hotlink Happy Hour”, was launched and customers enjoyed FREE 1GB of high speed internet, daily. But everytime we launched something, competitors follow suit, rendering us uncompetitive overnight! We had to hit the market FAST and HARD.

Insight, Strategy and the Idea
We knew: 1)Most low-to-mid ARPU segment resides in sub-urban areas 2)TV has the highest reach and effectiveness against the sub-urban But channel surfing is a pervasive problem on Astro TV. Instead of dismissing TV, we turned our problem into an opportunity! WE ‘RETARGETED’ CHANNEL SURFERS ON ASTRO With Astro, we introduced the first-ever advertising format on its EPG (Electronic Programme Guide) platform and placed Hotlink’s messages within it. Every time viewers switched channels, the EPG appeared on the bottom half of the screen with Hotlink’s ads. Infact, the more channels surfed, the more Hotlink’s ads were seen, enabling us to ‘Retarget’ effectively. You just couldn’t miss it!

Media Execution
To get our audience entrenched with Hotlink before competitor launches with similar or better product, we had to : 1)Drive maximum Reach The EPG banner ran across ALL 188 channels on AstroTV 2)Drive maximum Impact We needed to expose Hotlink as MANY times possible 3)Drive maximum Reach & Impact within shortest time period In this case, 7 days only 4)Short, Sweet & Simple -Ad duration kept effectively at 5s (research showed that highest attention is paid within first 5s of the ad) -Ad messages were direct (Example: ‘Stream on with free 30GB every month’) -Every time a channel is switched, a different message will ‘Remarketed’ to the same viewer

Results and Effectiveness
With 14.9 million unique TV viewers reached at a frequency of 25.8 times (that’s 15.2x more vs regular TV spotbuy with same budget): 1)Search queries for Hotlink Happy Hour hit record high (double vs Hotlink’s FAST launch) 2)ARPU increased 11% vs same period 2017 3)YOY revenue +2.9% 4)Subscriber base grew 3x YOY