HAW (How Advertising Works)

ARF ORIGINAL RESEARCH - How Ad Creative Can Benefit from Context Effects

  • Duane Varan; Horace Stripp; Steve Bellman - THE ARF ORIGINAL RESEARCH
  • Media Science; The ARF; Ehrenberg-Bass

Yes, context does matter in how advertising communicates, according to neuroscience studies conducted as part of the ARF’s “How Advertising Works” project. In examining the impact of humorous, fear-inducing, and sentimental programs, the studies yielded surprising and valuable findings such as this: sentimental ads may benefit from context alignment, boosting both memory and ad liking.

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ARF Original Research: How Advertising Works

Creating Effective Mobile Advertising
Manuel Garcia-Garcia, Ph.D., SVP, The ARF

Mobile ad spend is at $43 billion and growing rapidly, but an estimated 62% of campaigns today are not using mobile in an optimal way. For example, creative executions customized or developed for mobile are far more effective than those repurposed from TV. We surveyed and interviewed creative experts from top agencies and the provided the following guidelines:
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The ARF AT ADVERTISING WEEK

The ARF held 2 presentations at last month’s New York Advertising Week Conference. The following content was from the first presentation on How Advertising Works, which consisted of 2 parts:

The first part of the presentation was a review of the ARF’s “How Advertising Works” in today’s cross-platform world. Recap of key findings from this ground truth research – the team looked at over 5,000 campaigns around the world, covering over 1,000 brands/sub-brands representing over 375 billion dollars. Five key takeaways highlighted by Jasper Snyder – EVP, Research & Innovation: Cross-Platform, The ARF:

  • The more platforms, the more effective (increasing return on investment)
  • Combinations of platforms: adding print to TV increases ROI 19%, adding radio increases it by 20% and adding digital to TV produces a “kicker” effect of 60% higher ROI
  • Optimum blend between traditional and digital media is almost the same among Millennials as it is for adults in general
  • Once you serve more than one digital impression a day to the same consumer, you run the risk of harming the brand sales, i.e. frequency is an issue.
  • About 75% of the impact of a campaign is generated by the creative; unified creative strategies where the campaign is linked across platforms are the most effective

The second part of the presentation showcased a panel of five trailblazers who discussed a variety of current and future industry issues.

The following are key highlights and quotes from the panel:

Steven Rosenblatt – Chief Revenue Officer, Foursquare:

In the future, everything will have a chip on it, which will allow us to make decisions in real time. We’re not going to skip ads if we like them and they’re relevant and apply to us – If I go to the movies once a year studios should not be advertising to me.

We still work in the metrics that are good for us, but not good for consumers.

Dave Morgan – CEO & Founder, Simulmedia:

We come from a world where we are trying to recreate the agency of the 1950’s. I believe we can bring as much creativity in math, in the algorithms we use or the methodologies and approaches.

Customers don’t want reports and insights, they want foresight. They want to know what’s going to happen in the future.

People will be able to decide what messages that they are willing to receive or not.

Decentralization of data with more transparency.

Radha Subramanyam – President, Insights, Research & Data Analytics, iHeartMedia‬

Content absolutely matters!

We need neuroscientists, and people with a design background, we need people who are classical analysts, your python people and your R people.  If you are going to do art and science (and that is the only way forward) you have to get everyone in the room.”

We keep talking about advertising as it has been in the past. What is advertising going to look like? We have to start thinking about reimagining advertising.

Howard Shimmel – Chief Research Officer, Turner Broadcasting

We need to change our perspective. From the trading of GRP’s and impressions to trading outcomes.”

Not all big data is good data (concurring with Betsy Rella).

One of the challenges is that we, as an industry, have not done a good enough job in putting the different pieces of data piece together to get a complete understanding of the consumer, their engagement in the category, with friends using things like social data. We need to put together an industry data map.

You can’t let the need to have everything syndicated third party slow down our progress. We rolled out a series of (Turner created) targeting tools that we believe is best in class.

Betsy Rella – VP, Research, TiVo Research & Analytics:

We have to be building larger data sets to get to the granularity.

More tailored, the customer journey… what’s going to prompt them to buy.

Predictive analytic tools are required.

Jasper Snyder – EVP, Research & Innovation: Cross-Platform, The ARF:

It’s super important that we embrace as an industry the balance between media and creative. And you can make a very strong case that in the past five or ten years it has been overly focused on the media, and run the risk of ignoring the creative.

Gayle Fuguitt – CEO & President, The ARF:

The people that I see will that are going to win are able to combine different systems and solutions, and not placing all their eggs in one basket with a single solutions provider.

Some of the best work I have done I get competitors to collaborate.  

We have to connect Madison Avenue and Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

To view the event (40 minutes) go to  http://newyork.advertisingweek.com/replay/#date=2016-09-26~video-id=32~venue=9

We will share the highlights from the second ARF presentation in an upcoming NYCU.

What 80 Years of Study Means for the Future of Advertising Research? via the Journal of Advertising Research, by Dr. Horst Stipp of the ARF

The ARF was founded in 1936 with a mission to improve the practice of advertising, marketing, and media research in pursuit of more effective marketing and advertising communications.

True to that mission, during its 80th year in 2016, the ARF launched a major new initiative, “How Advertising Works.” The goal was to deliver objective research-based insights that improve advertising and, ultimately, the return on marketing investments (ROI), with actionable insights for marketers in today’s media, consumer, and advertising environments. The study, which is ongoing, is focused on how advertising works today.

But it also provides valuable lessons about the history of advertising research and a glimpse into the future of such research.

The most important conclusion: three factors have been driving advertising research over the past 80 years. They are still the main drivers today and, we believe, will drive advertising research in the future:

  • The emergence of new advertising platforms
  • Changes related to the consumer
  • Methodology and data source innovation

Access full “How Advertising Works” article
(by logging in to MyARF)

Original Research – “Neural Pathways: Sequencing” (more on How Advertising Works) – The ARF’s Stipp & Garcia-Garcia

The ARF’s researchers Garcia-Garcia and Stipp will unveil more insights on how to make advertising more effective from the ARF’s “How Advertising Works” project.

Does the sequence of platforms in a multi-media campaign matter? Should TV always be first?

Should the platform determine the campaign strategy, or should the strategy determine the platform?

“How Advertising Works” insights presented at ReThink showed the importance of Creative. The new data confirm that. The researchers will show how to optimize Creative on different platforms to increase impact.

For more information visit Audience Measurement.

The Advertising Research Foundation Reveals Groundbreaking Research: How Advertising Works Today

The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) announced the findings from its How Advertising Works research, based on over 5000 campaigns, 12 years of data, and $375B in advertising spend in 41 countries across over 100 categories.  

This study, independently conducted by the ARF, was sponsored and supported by over 25 contributing companies including ESPN, MediaScience, Neuro-Insight, Analytic Partners, Unilever, Kellogg, Levi Strauss, Nissan, Starcom Mediavest, CBS, Facebook, Google, Marketing Evolution, Millward Brown, iHeartMedia, Meredith, Nielsen, and comScore. There has not been a study done to this scale and depth in over 25 years.

Groundbreaking insights are highlighted:

  • Marketers may be starving off growth by not investing enough in advertising as they shift the mix from traditional to new platforms, missing the opportunity to generate billions in additional return.
  • Spending across multiple platforms delivers greater ROI than any single platform – including for Millennial consumers.
  • “Silo-investing” – too much frequency via a single platform can lead to diminishing returns.
  • To jumpstart growth marketers can take advantage of the “kicker effect” of smart spending with specific combinations of traditional plus new media on the right platforms.
  • A unified creative strategy across platforms is key to compound the investment of a multi-platform campaign, but unified creative executions also need to be specifically tailored to each platform to ensure optimal consumer engagement.

Gayle Fuguitt, CEO and President of the ARF said, “We are pleased to lead this important initiative that brings scientific proof, measured opportunities and a roadmap for growth to the industry at C-suite speed and scale.”

 

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