THE LAST WORD: Tuesday
Stephen DiMarco (Tubular Labs) moderated this discussion on the second day of the conference with the anchor commentators who shared their perspectives on what they heard and what it means.
advertising
MODERATED TRACK DISCUSSIONS: Attention Measures
An impressive body of work is building in attention measurement. The three winning-papers sessions preceding this panel revealed a work in progress with shared goals as well as differences in approaches. Moderator Earl Taylor of the ARF’s MSI division asked the speakers about their views on barriers to the process, and opportunities for further improving attention measures.
Prior Attentive Ad Exposures Increase Ad Attention
Tristan Webster and Kenneth Wilbur showcased their most recent collaborative work examining attention and frequency in advertising: the impact of multiple exposures on people’s attention to TV ads. They applied CTV data which TVision has collected natively in the field to provide insight into the long-examined question, “Is there an optimal frequency for TV ads?”, but more granularly: “What is happening in the media environment while viewers see ads, and how does that affect their attention?”
Attentive Reach: The Case for Human Attention in Brand Advertising
Realeyes uses software solutions for measuring human attentional and emotional response to advertising. Max Kalehoff explained the importance of attention measurement as a gauge of brand performance. He urged companies, particularly those with latent sales, to incorporate it into their business models.
MODERATED TRACK DISCUSSIONS: Data Deprecation & Rising Privacy Concerns
Three core factors driving/limiting targeting are privacy, devices (IDFA), and at browser level (third party cookies). There are two broad trends in marketers’ response: 1) recreate identities or improve contextual targeting. Initiative suggests their attempt to recreate identity is balanced by their respect for privacy. Initiative is trying to maintain journey based engagement through technology.
The Context Effect: How Context is Critical & Transforming Digital Advertising
As consumer concerns about privacy are growing and legislators are responding by introducing legal restrictions, marketers are focusing on contextual targeting (instead of cookies) to make their advertising more effective. Research by Integral Ad Science (IAS) has shown that the growth of contextual targeting is not only being embraced by marketers, but also welcomed by consumers: they prefer ads that match the content they are viewing – which makes them more relevant to them.
MODERATED TRACK DISCUSSIONS: Attention Measures: What Counts & How Much Does it Cost
Jane Clarke (CIMM) followed up with each of this session’s presenters on the goals and data points of their discrete studies. The following are edited highlights from the discussions.
- A necessity condition is that consumers have to pay attention to advertising for advertising to initiate any kind of sequence, according to Shuba (Boston University). To the extent that consumers pay attention to ads, only then is any kind of advertising effect through a hierarchical sequence triggered, so it’s a necessary condition but it’s not sufficient to say which of these intermediate factors would have the effect on sales. Not all of these metrics drive sales equally – know the sequence for your brand and advertisers.
- Gen Z and Millennials consumed more content overall, but still had a higher rate of aided recall than other generations (Gen X, Boomers), shared Heather (Snap). Last year, they conducted a research study with Kantar to evaluate the information processing power across different generations to see if there were any differences. Each generation used Snap as they normally would, and they controlled for ad exposure. What they learned is that younger participants showed superior ad processing power when looking at ad message recall. This is surprising because we may be underestimating what we expect from the younger generations.
- Advertisers are getting better at creating 6-second ads. According to Kara (Magna Global), back when they first started building :06 second ads, it was simply taking your :15 or :30 second ad and cutting it down to :06 seconds. You were really at the mercy at what had already been shot for another purpose. Cutting the original down to :06 seconds and maintaining branding and storytelling was very difficult to do. Now advertisers are creating :06 second ads – either on a custom basis or shooting with :06 second ad in mind, knowing that the longer versions will be cut down. Overall, that’s led to more efficient short ads because they’ve learned with the right material and testing what is going to work in a shorter amount of time.
- The historical econometric model approach won’t garner the most accurate view of cross-platform reach or delivery, noted Heather. From this research they were able to provide a different way of thinking. A :06 second ad isn’t half as effective as a :12 second ad, and a :12 second ad isn’t a frequency of 2 to a :06 sec ad – that kind of thinking doesn’t hold true any longer. They saw that there were other kinds of descriptors, like platform, device, attention – those can and should be used to better equivalize impressions across platforms. She hopes this research challenges the industry’s way of thinking.
- A new tool called the Attention Calculator was just launched by TVision and Lumen. Yan (TVision) explained that this tool was based on their study and it’s for anyone interested in attention for media planning and duration based metrics. It’s a free and interactive tool that calculates the cost of attention with the user’s CPMs to see the average cost per impression across platforms, based on Ebiquity data.
Advertising’s Sequence of Effects on Consumer Mindset and Sales
The academic study at the heart of this presentation compared 13 hierarchy-of-effects (HoE) advertising models to determine which model matters the most, what moderators are most prominent, and what factors and sequence are most important in driving sales. Understanding the sequence of effects is most important for advertisers and marketers as they build their campaigns.
Does Every Second Count?
Kara Manatt (Magna) and Heather O’Shea (Snap) presented research that compared :06 second and :15 second ad lengths across three video platforms – Snap, video aggregators, and full episode players (FEPs) – to determine the optimum ad length for an effective ad strategy.
In testing the same :06 and :15 ads for the same four brands, the study factored in the characteristics of each platform – pre-roll/mid-roll, skippable and non-skippable, and device – as it tracked 7,500+ panelists’ viewing behaviors for brand awareness, brand perception, and purchase intent.
Understanding the True Cost of Attention Across Media
Lumen Research and TVision came together with Ebiquity to study differences in the way advertising generates visual attention across varied media and how much it costs to buy that attention. By combining their individual datasets – Lumen’s visual attention to digital advertising on desktop and smartphones, TVision’s TV attention data, and Ebiquity’s cost data – the researchers devised a new currency, the aCPM, a proxy metric representing the cost per thousand seconds of attention.