A weekly round-up of the industry’s top stories and research curated by the ARF.
Editor’s Note – featured in Marketing Week, this article is based on research by Realeyes & Lucid.
Of the top 12 most emotionally engaging ads, 11 had humor at their heart. Ads were rated across four metrics – attraction, retention, engagement and impact – to give an overall ‘Emotion All’ score.
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In a first of its kind study, Ipsos tested all of the commercials during Super Bowl LII in real-time at a party featuring drinks, snacks and electrodes. Ipsos recruited 45 football fans split between the Eagles and Patriots to watch the game in a theater in New York City. Each participant wore biometric sensors that measured their emotional arousal based on galvanic skin response (GSR). This new technology from Shimmer Research allowed Ipsos to measure nonconscious response to every commercial throughout the duration of the ad.
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We looked at every second of commercial and game time, and analyzed which ads captured the most attention (see top ten below), generated the most smiles (#1 was Bud Lights “Bud Knight”) and were best helped by celebrity endorsements (#1 went to Mountain Dew & Doritos).
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Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from a Forbes article written by ARF President & CEO Scott McDonald. The full article can be read using the link below the summary.
Some marketers have despaired of ever being able to connect a sales impact to a specific and unique element of complex and multi-faced marketing plans – preferring instead to use their “gut” to guide marketing decisions and to rely on anecdote or vanity metrics to justify the results. However, in our era of data-driven marketing, this “know-nothing” approach has become increasingly untenable as CFOs and CEOs demand more exacting demonstrations of marketing ROI.
Editor’s Note: This MediaPost commentary, from Simulmedia CEO, Dave Morgan, generated a significant number of responses – these, and the full article, can be read using the link at the bottom of this piece.
Industry people find it incomprehensible when I tell them that “Judge Judy” delivers more audience advertising minutes every day than all of the videos on all of YouTube across all of America all day. Why are they so surprised? More than 10 million people on average watch “Judge Judy” during every minute in the show, including the eight or so minutes of ads shown each half hour. Plus, “Judge Judy” isn’t alone. “Wheel of Fortune,” “Jeopardy” and “Family Feud” deliver similar numbers day in and day out.
Publishers say they’re not getting credit for the audiences they’re reaching with social media videos.
As digital publishers bet big on video in search of advertising riches, many believe that a traditional method of media measurement isn’t keeping up.
Publishers have long used “unique visitors” as a benchmark to compare the size of their website audiences and lure advertisers. But some media companies say the metric has become somewhat outmoded in an era when content is being disseminated widely on social media and other platforms. Publishers publish video content directly on services such as Facebook and Instagram to capitalize on the massive scale and reach of those platforms. Since audiences for these videos don’t always visit publishers’ websites, they are not captured in unique visitor figures.
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The Ad Meter has been an annual industry barometer that measures public opinion on Super Bowl commercials. The poll has been sponsored and published for decades by USA Today Networks. The table below ranks the brands that have had the highest overall score over the past three decades (minimum 10 Super Bowl ads – and those listed all enjoy high scores). Pepsi and Nike have ranked the highest overall.
Fischer, S. (2018, January 30). Axios Media Trends. Axios.
These days, you can find virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa or Google’s Assistant in all sorts of things, from smart speakers and smartphones to washing machines and bathroom mirrors.
The challenge isn’t finding these digitized helpers, it is finding people who use them to do much more than they could with the old clock/radio in the bedroom. A management consulting firm recently looked at heavy users of virtual assistants, defined as people who use one more than three times a day. The firm, called Activate, found that the majority of these users turned to virtual assistants to play music, get the weather, set a timer or ask questions. Activate also found that the majority of Alexa users had never used more than the basic apps that come with the device, although Amazon said its data suggested that four out of five registered Alexa customers have used at least one of the more than 30,000 “skills”—third-party apps that tap into Alexa’s voice controls to accomplish tasks—it makes available.
But while some hard-core fans are indeed tapping into advanced features of virtual assistants, like controlling the lights in their homes, for the most part, “people are still using these speakers for very routine tasks,” said Michael J. Wolf, the founder of Activate. “It’s not clear that there is something that’s going to drive people to use these.”
Some believe virtual assistant technology can be that sort of platform, and the company with the most useful assistant will gain an advantage for their other services — like internet search or online shopping. Lose that competition, however, and a company could be at the mercy of its rivals.
Paul Erickson, a senior analyst at the research firm IHS Markit, said, “The more interesting functionality is yet to come.”
For now, consumers’ satisfaction with their smart speakers—and by extension, the onboard assistants—is helped in part by the fact they didn’t pay a lot to get them into their homes.
Wakabayashi, D. & Wingfield, N. (2018, January 15). Alexa, We’re Still Trying to Figure Out What to Do with You. The New York Times.
Editor’s Note: An ARF Report by Christopher Bacon, EVP Research Quality & Innovation
CES is massive with an estimated 3,900 exhibitors. But despite all the hustle a couple of themes stood out:
Everything will soon be connected. All the electronics manufacturers demonstrated how they were linking together everything in your house through voice-activated devices. You can turn on the lights, brew the coffee, make toast, read (or listen to) your emails/posts/tweets, watch morning news reports all by simple commands to Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. And if you’re too sleepy to talk, you can turn on your 148″ screen on the wall and touch all the devices you want to activate.
Driver not required. Nearly every major automotive company had a car on the CES floor and every one of them had some form of autonomous driving capability. There’s more emphasis on the experience inside the car since there’s less effort required to actually maneuver the machine from point A to point B.
Consumers control content and distribution. Speaker after speaker emphasized that the consumer is at the center of everything they do, be it original content, “shoulder” content—the add-ons to create 360 engagement and allow consumers to immerse in the experience—or means of access. Marketers talked about the importance of brand storytelling to inspire consumer “fans”, taking brand loyalty to the next level of consumer demand. But “fandom” may not be relevant in all industries. Marketers consistently spotlighted how technology is helping to create consumer experiences to drive growth and build brand loyalty.
While CES showcases the potential of what can be, we had some reminders of what’s required to make the future a reality, e.g. the infrastructure has to be in place for all this technology to work. The irony wasn’t lost on anyone that the lights went out for more than 2 hours on the convention floor. Technology won’t work without reliable power, high-speed internet access, and rules of the road. The question is, Who’s going to provide this?
Also, while VR and AR abound, they were still relegated to games and entertainment. There were still long lines of people waiting to take the VR roller coaster ride or big-game safari. But there weren’t many examples of VR and AR being integrated into everyday experiences.
Finally, the juxtaposition of the 148″ television screen with the 6″ mobile screen questioned whether bigger is always better. Will a larger screen encourage more attention or just become more expensive wallpaper?
A+E Networks is stepping up its research game in order to provide advertisers fresh insights into marketing to women. The “SheReports” initiative is the beginning of A+E’s effort to provide marketers — and prospective clients — with data and cultural information that will make viewers more comfortable watching ad supported TV for women, make the advertising and marketing more effective.
A+E has already conducted two major studies about women. It has begun publishing a monthly newsletter for about 5,000 brand decision-makers. And it is working with the Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) #SeeHer program, which aims to increase the percentage of accurate portrayals of women and girls in the U.S. in media by 20% by 2020 — the 100th anniversary of women winning the right to vote.
Amy Baker, EVP of client strategy and insights at A+E Networks and head of a recently launched client strategy and insights team, said the initiative grew out of research showing that women didn’t like the way they were depicted in TV advertising.
Two years ago, A+E began working with research companies and cultural anthropologists on a couple of broad studies on womanhood and how women look at money. The “Womanhood Insights” study found that women of nearly all ethnic, economic and educational backgrounds want to see strength when women are depicted on TV. They also prefer a realistic portrayal of their lives, not a glossy fantasy.
The insights from the studies that have been shared with clients are being used to develop video products, some of which will be launched at on-air branded content.
“These insights give us the ability to then create product that makes sense for what the viewers want and what the advertisers need,” she said. “So we have a handful of different products that are in development right now.”
Lafayette, J. (2018, January 15). A+E’s “SheReports” Offers Insights into Women Consumers. Broadcasting & Cable.