A weekly round-up of the industry’s top stories and research curated by the ARF.
Gunnard Johnson, Head of Measurement Science & Insights at Pinterest – We measure emotions to improve both the consumer experience and ad impact. But measuring emotions is not enough: you have to understand the link between emotions and behavior.
Duane Varan, CEO MediaScience Labs – There is no one-size-fits all method. You have to develop the right toolbox (of measures) to achieve actionable solutions for your business.
Brad Smallwood, VP of Marketing Science at Facebook – Companies should protect user privacy at all cost in order to better use the data.
Babak Pahlavan, Senior Director of Product Management for Measurement Products at Google – … there will be explosive growth in mobile continuity and a push toward cross channel measurement. 2018 will be a big year for attribution across the board.
Jed Hartman, CRO, The Washington Post – In 1989, we said, ‘The content we were charging for we are now going to give away for free, but advertisers will pay’ … It was a dumb decision, but what was equally as dumb is publishers thinking they couldn’t backtrack. If you feel your content has a value, you can charge for it and people will pay for it.
John Trimble, CRO, Pandora – We recently began testing audio ads to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of ads that span a variety of lengths. What we’re seeing with shorter audio ads is that they are exceedingly popular in younger demographics. In older demos, higher ad recall is attributed to 30-second spots, illustrating their continued relevance and value in the face of what is quickly becoming an obsession with shorter-form ads.
Michelle Froah, Samsung VP of Marketing Excellence – spoke on a panel discussing the industry’s “elephants in the room”. The industry needs to establish the role of “chief marketing scientist” to dig deeper into insights.
Lydia Daley, SVP, Social Media & Branded Content Strategy, Viacom – Visual imaging is currently the major form of Millennial communication. Millennials value experiences over material things and are seeking authenticity in their interactions with brands. It is simply not enough to talk the talk. Brands need to demonstrate that they are good citizens with a compelling story.
Dan Greenberg, Sharethrough CEO – He would advise programmatic advertisers to max out their buys at about a thousand-ish sites, or even within the hundreds.
Otherwise, you’ll probably end up on sites that a) you’ve never heard of and b) you shouldn’t be on” from a brand safety perspective.
Rick Watrall, Horizon Chief Analytics Officer – It is important to know what data to use to give your clients what they want. Be honest about what all this technology is going to do for your clients. Don’t get pigeonholed into putting all your money into something that’s only going to gain half a point of spend for your client. Point it at the big stuff.
Jill King, SVP Marketing and Partnerships for Cartoon Network, Adult Swim and Boomerang – More and more brands are able to create social-broadcast moments. Adult Swim has done this well over the years – we create “Instagrammable” moments where fans end up doing a lot of the broadcasting for you.
Many brands want to be storytellers and use data to inform what content works and what doesn’t. C-level executives shared how they approach (three of the four):
Dustin Cohn, head of brand management & marketing communications, Marcus by Goldman Sachs – We use data-driven storytelling in our messaging, web design, advertising, product features and interactions with agents. For instance, our data shows that 77% of creditworthy Americans in credit card debt don’t know that a personal loan can be used to pay down their debt and our research shows people are frustrated by banks’ hidden fees. So we position Marcus as a service that lets people pay less interest with a lower fixed-rate loan, and highlight product features like no fees.
We often turn our data insights into content like infographics and social media posts to educate consumers on how they manage their debts. We share most content on Facebook and Twitter. Our basic KPI [of content marketing] is engagement that entails likes, shares and comments.
Doug Busk, former global group director of digital communications & social media, Coca-Cola – Engagement is a major metric for us. For instance, on Twitter, a standard retweet doesn’t necessarily mean that the person is engaging with your content, but if it is a quote tweet with comments, it is real engagement.
In terms of content engagement in the U.S., Facebook is still the king, followed by Google cards and Apple News, messaging apps like Line and WhatsApp and then voice assistants like Amazon Alexa.
Jeannie Chu, vp of social media, content and digital marketing, American Express – Data is important, but it doesn’t always help with good storytelling. Sometimes you need to use your judgment to think about the creative from a brand’s perspective.
For instance, we had lots of data showing that people reconsider their finances during big moments like having their first kid or buying their first house. But the character of first-time parent doesn’t make sense for Tina Fey because she already went through that stage. In the end, we decided to present ourselves through Tina, who in the ads sent congrats to people who embraced those firsts in their lives.
Yuyu Chen. How Equinox, Coca-Cola, American Express and Marcus use data for storytelling. Digiday.
To read the complete article click to visit Digiday.
A new survey and ethnography research that Hearts & Science conducted with Omnicom Media Group found that the TV and video consumption of 47% of Millennials and Gen Xers – encompassing the 22 to 45 age range – aren’t effectively captured by the TV measurement currency. We call this audience segment “The Unreachables,” because the industry systems of record for planning and measurement guides media buys away from reaching them. The Unreachables are highly sought after by our clients. And Unreachables aren’t as elusive as they seem, but in order to reach them one must look beyond the current incumbent TV planning and measurement tools.
Perhaps the more fundamental issue, however, is philosophical: traditional, panel-based approaches to TV measurement are old-school technology designed for old-school media. Panel sizes are too small to represent advanced targeting (beyond age/gender demos) and the TV-centric measurement methodology doesn’t accurately reflect today’s consumer viewing patterns. In short, they leave advertisers with a generation of Unreachables.
In the meantime, agencies and brands will – together – need to rewrite the media planning and buying playbooks. We’ll update planning systems to account for the glaring gaps in the measurement data, and will look to leverage new mobile datasets as they emerge. We all must champion the adoption of open SDKs that make it easier for publishers and broadcasters – and their audience – to be counted. Most important, we encourage brands to get their customer data in order so they’ll be ready to leverage identity-based marketing to competitive advantage. After all, the ability to reach future audiences depends on it.
Scott Hagedorn is chief executive of Hearts & Science, a media agency owned by Omnicom Group Inc.
Scott Hagedorn. Outside Voices: How Marketers Are Missing a Generation of ‘Unreachables.’ The Wall Street Journal.
To read the complete article click to visit the Wall Street Journal.