News You Can Use

FORECASTxSCIENCE: 3rd ARF West November 14–15, 2017

• Posted: October 25, 2017

Here’s a preview of our two-day event on “Better Market Forecasting: Traditional Research or 21st Century Data?”

We will compare conventional forecasting tools (such as surveys) to Big Data approaches (such as Google Trends and social media listening) in their ability to help marketers predict outcomes accurately, to spot trends, and to monitor customer sentiment. Learn best practices to more reliably predict what’s next.

Taking place near the one-year anniversary of the 2016 presidential election, included will be a post-mortem on the performance of polls, betting markets, search, and social media in predicting the outcome of that race.

Case studies will also be presented on how companies are using Big Data in combination with conventional research methods to understand their customers and markets more deeply.

The keynote will be a Q&A with Seth Stephens-Davidowitz Author of Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are.

View Seth Stephens-Davidowitz’s PBS News Hour interview.

Click to learn more about FORECASTxSCIENCE at Google Headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA.

Register now. Space is limited.

Chart – Favorable/Unfavorable Attitudes Towards Different Ad Types

• Posted: October 25, 2017

People really don’t like pop-up ads, pre-roll

Via Axios, Source: Morning Consult

Clorox CMO Calls for New Focus on Building Brands

• Posted: October 25, 2017

Marketers must find a more refined balance between building their brands and meeting short-term objectives, according to Eric Reynolds, the CMO of Clorox. He discussed some of the challenges facing the industry during a session at the Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) 2017 Masters of Marketing Conference.

“In a time when we have all this data and technology … why is our brand effectiveness falling? We would argue it’s because we forgot about brands,” he said. “People are no less interested in brands and loyalty.

He noted that there has been “in the last few years a dramatic change in the effect from long- to short-term brand activation.” In supporting that claim, he cited studies that found that long-term brand building not long ago accounted for 69% of brand relevancy, but that impact has fallen to 47%, even as short-term activation had risen from 31% to a majority share of 53%.

That would be fine, the Clorox CMO asserted, if effectiveness had improved. But, in fact, global self-reported effectiveness has declined. “This should be a remarkable wake-up call to us all,” he said.

Source: WARC

Journal of Advertising Research (JAR): Examining Consumers’ Multiplatform Usage and Its Contribution to Their Trust in Advertising

• Posted: October 25, 2017

Usage across platforms has brought new attention to the role of consumer trust. The authors’ assessment of usage and response metrics across platforms shows that use frequency contributes to consumers’ trust in advertising, with age also playing a meaningful role.

Examining platform use across a variety of consumers, they found that the greater use of particular platforms bred greater levels of trust:

• “Younger adults will prefer the efficiency-related functional communication provided by interactive mobile platforms, as opposed to other platform types.”
• “Conversely, older adults use television more and mobile less. Armed with this knowledge, advertisers better can target relevant age groups.”
• “Platform-use frequency of consumers’ interaction with certain platforms changes, therefore, so should the distribution of advertising dollars.”

Source: Kristin Stewart (assistant professor of marketing, California State University San Marcos) and Isabella Cunningham (the Ernest A. Sharpe Centennial Professor in Communications at the University of Texas at Austin)

JAR September 2017 Issue

Authentic Brands

• Posted: October 25, 2017

The 2017 Cohn & Wolfe Authentic Brands study examines the role of authenticity in business, the attributes associated with an authentic brand and the impact of authenticity on consumer, investor and employee attitudes and behaviors.

This is the fifth report in their Authentic Brands series. For 2017 they surveyed more than 15,000 consumers across 15 markets on their perceptions of more than 1,400 brands, and applied their proprietary algorithm to determine the Authentic 100, an annual index of global brands ranked by consumer perception of authenticity.

Cohn & Wolfe have also determined the top 20 most authentic brands in Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Among the qualities of “brand authenticity are: Communicating honestly about products and services; Communicating honestly about environmental impact and sustainability measures; Acting with integrity at all times; Being clear about and true to beliefs; Being open and honest about partners and suppliers; Standing for more than just making money; Having a relevant and engaging story.

Here are the Top Dozen in the US survey (in rank order): Amazon, PayPal, Burt’s Bees, Crayola, M&Ms, LEGO, Hershey’s, Newman’s Own, AAA, UPS, Intel and Apple.

Source: Cohn & Wolfe

ARF Event October 23, 2017 OTT: Is TV by Any Other Name Still TV?

• Posted: October 18, 2017

At a time when streaming content is growing and “anytime, anywhere” viewing on phones and tablets is common, what does it mean to “watch TV”? Does it always involve a TV set with cable or satellite reception, watching shows from a traditional TV network? Or, do other types of viewing replace “TV” as “TV” in consumers’ mind? As consumer habits evolve to embrace content across multiple platforms, advertisers and brands need to adapt and find new ways to reach target audiences and increase engagement. The following are a few takeaways from this event.

• OTT usage and streaming continue to grow rapidly:
  • Ecosystem = Perfect storm: High penetration of broadband; More quality digital video content; Affordable smart TVs and streaming devices; Choice of ad models (Rockwood, Turner)
  • Majority of the total US population views TV live, but streaming is approaching a quarter of total television time among younger age cohorts, e.g. 23% of P12-17, 21% of P18-24, 21% of P25-34 (Fuhrer, Nielsen)

• Streaming is often complimentary to pay TV.
  • 75% of streamers have cable. (Ramspacher, GfK)
  • Only 34% of Connected TV users are Cord Cutters/Nevers. (Bordes, CBS)

• OTT offers opportunities for audience-based TV buys, precision targeting at scale, viewability, a brand safe environment. OTT is a nice bridge to make linear TV better and improve the pitfalls of digital (Horstman, TiVo).

• But lack of uniform measurements and better data are barriers to fully monetizing OTT. Wang, of FuboTV, noted that it would be ideal to have one or two external measurement partners that all agreed on uniform metrics. Steuer of Omnicom stated that “I still don’t have data to power, to buy, and plan to scale.” Rooke and Schafer from the FreeWheel Council recommended that agencies and marketers should not wait for a single measurement standard.

• Let content lead. Start with the best content then select the platform that best reaches your target audience (Mark Marshall, NBCU). It doesn’t really matter where it is. People will go to good content (Alex Wallace, Oath).

All About “THOR”

• Posted: October 18, 2017

Madison Avenue has for years paid for TV ads based on the number of people who see commercials. Now, a group of media executives is offering an intriguing new wrinkle: What if advertisers paid for commercials based on how many people were prompted to make a purchase after they watched a specific ad?

A coterie of cable and broadcast TV networks have joined together in the hopes of unveiling an initiative that would employ so-called “attribution modeling,” a technique that gives credit for exposure to specific ads over a predetermined period of time, as a basis for individual deals between advertisers and TV networks. The effort has been dubbed “Thor.”

While TV networks already conduct internal research for advertisers on the effectiveness of their campaigns, Thor would standardize it so marketers could see how their campaigns delivered on their business goals across multiple networks.

Sources:

Jeanine Poggi. TV Networks Meet on Thor, New Effort to Prove Their Ads Work. AdAge.

Brian Steinberg. TV Industry Leaders Developing Purchase Measurement Plan for Advertisers. Variety.

ANA, 4As and IAB Include Browsers in Self-Regulatory Digital Ad Standards

• Posted: October 18, 2017

In fall of 2016, the industry formed the Coalition for Better Ads (CBA) to determine the advertisements that undermine the best experience on the internet and (in effect) force people to install ad blockers. Research by the Coalition — about 25,000 polled — identified popup ads, auto-play videos with sound and too many simultaneous ads as some of the least welcome ad experiences online.

Now, three groups, the 4A’s (American Association of Advertising Agencies), Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) have jointly called for industry self-regulation to help “banish” the most “offensive” digital ad formats. They are united in the belief that standard-based products to remove unacceptable user experience must be self-regulated and not left to individual browser companies or others to implement according to their own interpretations and assessment processes

The three organizations are also members of the CBA – as are Unilever and Procter & Gamble, the FMCG manufacturers, tech giants Google and Facebook, and media brands like The Washington Post and Thomson Reuters.

Sources:

Laurie Sullivan. ANA, 4As And IAB Include Browsers In Self-Regulatory Digital Ad Standards. MediaPost

Industry groups aim to ‘banish’ bad ad formats. WARC

Baby Boomers to Advertisers: Don’t Forget About Us

• Posted: October 18, 2017

As much of the marketing world focuses on new ways to woo and dazzle the highly coveted millennial generation, some companies are setting their sights on an overlooked (at least by advertisers) group: baby boomers.

“The group is the forgotten generation,” said Robert Passikoff, president of Brand Keys. While the millennials are sharing stuff, boomers are buying stuff, Mr. Passikoff said.

Larry Light, a co-author of “Six Rules for Brand Revitalization,” added: “They’re just as large as the millennials in numbers. And they have huge discretionary income.”

In addition, many companies see millennials as the future. Catch them early enough and you may have a lifelong customer. But that’s not necessarily the case, experts say. Tastes and passions change frequently for younger people. But boomers, once they have connected with a brand, can stay loyal for years, said Scott Gulbransen, director of communications for AARP Nevada.

With hotels and resorts, it gets trickier. Not many resort-style destinations want to showcase seniors in bathing suits lounging by their pools in ads. That’s where dual marketing comes in, in which a company uses different videos, photos and messages to market to different age groups.

Janet Morrissey. Baby Boomers to Advertisers: Don’t Forget About Us.
New York Times

Infographic – What Millennials Value Most in Their Lives, Careers and Personal Tech

• Posted: October 18, 2017

A simple choice between A and B can say a lot about a person—or, in the case of 9GAG’s just-released Millennial Black Paper, an entire generation.

In April, the cross-platform entertainment network, which counts 150 million users around the globe, teamed up with research firm GfK to create a simple “would you rather” questionnaire meant to determine what millennials (defined as ages 18-34) value in their lives, careers, politics, technology and more. Over the course of two weeks, the survey received 134,694 responses from people in 194 countries.

Emma Bazilian. Infographic – What Millennials Value Most in Their Lives, Careers and Personal Tech. Adweek (Sources: GfK and 9GAG)