effectiveness

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.

Unlocking the New Currency of Attention

This presentation focused on the implications of attention for advertisers, and how we can start applying these insights from a planning and buying perspective. Although viewability has become a proxy for attention, just because an ad is considered viewable does not mean eyes on ads. Viewability isn’t necessarily a true indication of attention – it can be quite arbitrary, and we need to go beyond that to the better and more accurate representation of those natural attention behaviors.

MODERATED TRACK DISCUSSIONS: Cross-Platform: Measurement & Identity

Moderator Jorge (TikTok) asked the panelists three key questions:

  • The pros and cons of using mobile phones as meters in a time of such strong privacy concerns;
  • The panelists’ views on measurement of advertising effectiveness; and
  • The most unexpected feedback they received.

Neuroscience Got to the Heart of Esports Audiences

This presentation, based on research conducted jointly by Activision Blizzard and Alter,  looks at the power of gaming with emphasis on ROI. Jonathan provided the background of esports, which he defined as professional gaming organized across teams or leagues with a range of game types. Professional e-gaming has grown rapidly to 436 million global viewers as of 2020 and is a highly fragmented marketplace.

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.

Ad-Spend Cues, Deepfakes/A.I., Badass Endorsers and Influencer KPIs

  • JAR Insights Studio

At this Insights Studio, authors from three different continents showcase their recently published work—including the JAR Best Paper 2022 on how advertising expenditures drive consumers’ perceptions of ad and brand quality. Also featured are studies on deepfakes and AI reshaping the advertising industry, the success of using product endorsers who are actors known for roles portraying despicable characters, and KPI patterns of social media influencers across several platforms. Talking points in the concluding Q&A span the future of AI in advertising and influencer marketing, machine-driven decisions for choosing endorsers, and factors (product- and economic-related) affecting consumer perceptions of quality in TV ads and engagement in user-generated content.

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Panel: Future of Creative Effectiveness

Anibal Casso of Ogilvy moderated a discussion with panelists representing different perspectives in the industry (brand, agency, research). They tackled best practices, current challenges and the future of creative effectiveness.

The Power of Creative Data: Insights & Applications from 1 Trillion Ad Impressions

In this session, Anastasia Leng of CreativeX argued that marketing and creative have the power to change things. In the face of an increased ad pool, which has gone up 6x in the last 20 years, ads now have a smaller shelf-life and need to be created in a more customized manner. In large part, technology has created this challenging landscape in marketing and advertising, but technology can now also help to address these new challenges. She pointed to computer vision technology which can help by supplying data created from “micro-feedback,” by clustering this information and fusing this feedback to create more useful macro-data to base decisions on.

How Augmented Intelligence Unlocks Creative Effectiveness on YouTube

Ariane Le Port of Google explored the relationship between augmented intelligence and creative effectiveness on YouTube. She noted that in the past, measuring creative was a challenge that was “so nuanced and so complex” that people tended to shy away from measuring it. In this session, Ariane pointed to a six-year experiment on YouTube video ads to help brands understand what is most effective in mobile video. In the experiment, they conducted A/B testing and took into account a variety of areas, such as framing, pacing, audio and other areas to find patterns of creative effectiveness. These experiments led to a partnership between Google and Ipsos to create YouTube’s ABCDs (Guidelines) for creative effectiveness. YouTube and Ipsos studied 17,000 ads in an effort to identify the creative elements that have a measurable impact, using a human and machine learning (ML) approach. Leveraging machine learning (ML) enabled them to look at large and robust datasets to gain a deep understanding of what elements work best in creative. Ariane discussed their augmented intelligence methodology which included data scope and collection, human and machine creative coding, metrics and data modeling and insights and commercialization.