Tracey Chen of Warner Bros. Discovery walked the audience through the details of their 10-year Video Now study. On demand usage has become universal from baby boomers to Gen Z, while linear TV continues to decline year-over-year with each age group. This is especially true among younger and multicultural audiences. Time spent on SVOD doubled in 2021 while linear TV declined from 20% to 12% in the same period. Now, consumers’ willingness to pay for subscriptions is cooling, allowing AVOD and FAST services to flourish. Fifty percent of consumers have used a FAST service. Roku is the most popular while Tubi saw the biggest year-on-year growth.
Dana Sparber of NBCUniversal unveiled the results of an online survey investigating inflation and the multicultural shopper. It was conducted using a Numerator panel in Q4 of 2022. Among the 7,000 surveyed were a mix of Asian, black and Hispanic shoppers, all adults +18, half men and half women. These consumers had all bought items in the categories of grocery, health and wellness, beauty, household products, non-alcoholic beverages and electronics. The study not only looked at online shopping but in-store and bodega sales—an important aspect often missed. Multicultural consumers across the board and regardless of household income had a much sunnier view of the state of inflation and were far more likely to say they would continue their normal spending habits. All projected the common theme of resiliency.
Global marketing studies must produce comparable data, despite differences in culture that impact emotional reactions to words and images. This research suggests methods that help overcome these challenges.
Steve Keller (SXM Media) looks at opportunities for sonic interventions: What are things in the world, in our culture, where sound can provide a positive solution? Sonic intervention, for the purposes of this research, starts with the concept of the color line, first addressed by W.E.B. Dubois in his 1903 collection of essays, “Soul of Black Folks.” For Dubois, the color line was the dividing line between Black and White individuals. A century later, SUNY Binghamton professor Jennifer Lynn Stoever defined the sonic color line as the hierarchical division between the whiteness and blackness of sounds that have been created and perpetuated by a dominant culture on the listening ear. Indeed, in the 1920s radio show Amos ‘n’ Andy with 40 million listeners, two white personalities performed racialized sonic tropes. Black radio performers were forced to play these stereotypes. Fast-forward to today, the sonic color line still cuts through our technology, our smart speakers, and often in the studio Black voiceover actors are asked to sound more “urban”. Yet the error rate in recognizing prompts from Black speakers is significantly higher than the rate for White speakers.
Many researchers struggle with developing and writing about their work in a way that is relevant to advertising and marketing practices. This article offers a process—a toolkit of sorts—for crafting qualitative research that is both accessible to industry readers and impactful to the practices of advertising and marketing. A webinar link featuring the authors presenting their findings is also provided for members in the summary below.
Robert L. Santos of the U.S. Census Bureau detailed how the organization is evolving itself, as well as its foundational statistics about America’s people and economy, in preparation for the Decennial Census in 2030.
Steve Keller – Sonic Strategy Director, Studio Resonate, SXM Media
Steve Keller (SXM Media) looks at opportunities for sonic interventions: What are things in the world, in our culture, where sound can provide a positive solution? Sonic intervention, for the purposes of this research, starts with the concept of the color line, first addressed by W.E.B. Dubois in his 1903 collection of essays, “Soul of Black Folks.” For Dubois, the color line was the dividing line between Black and White individuals. A century later, SUNY Binghamton professor Jennifer Lynn Stoever defined the sonic color line as the hierarchical division between the whiteness and blackness of sounds that have been created and perpetuated by a dominant culture on the listening ear. Indeed, in the 1920s radio show Amos ‘n’ Andy with 40 million listeners, two white personalities performed racialized sonic tropes. Black radio performers were forced to play these stereotypes. Fast-forward to today, the sonic color line still cuts through our technology, our smart speakers, and often in the studio Black voiceover actors are asked to sound more “urban”. Yet the error rate in recognizing prompts from Black speakers is significantly higher than the rate for White speakers.
All of the above is the background for Steve’s research in which he builds a business case for sonic diversity in radio, podcasts and other audio platforms. To the best of his knowledge, this is the first large-scale sonic diversity study of its kind: the impact of racialized listening on advertisement favorability and effectiveness. In two experiments (one a large field experiment, the other a quantitative experiment with panelists) researchers used three podcasts—Sway’s Interviews (interviews with black entertainers), Song Exploder (about deconstructing songs, a varied audience) and This American Life (predominantly white program and audience). The study used 20 voice actors divided evenly black/white/male/female, who were not coached, and who were paid as if they were working on a regular ad to provide a conversational read from the advertising scripts, for 60 sonic stimuli total. Partnering with Veritonic the researchers asked participants (4,000-plus sample size) questions about favorability and attributes in the ad, and intent to listen, and whether they thought the voiceover was “definitely,” “probably” or “not sure” either Caucasian or Black.
A second experiment analyzed advertisement effectiveness: Would there be a rise in podcast listening as a result of the ads?
Key Takeaways
Whereas White actors were consistently perceived as White, there was a lot of misattribution for Black voices. This is probably due to “sonic markers,” i.e., what we listen for. And the race of the listener influenced the perception of the race: Black listeners were much better able to correctly identify the race of the voice actor, although not always.
Context matters: Misattribution occurred when there were other potential contextual cues, for example, Black voices were more often correctly identified when advertising for Sway’s Interviews than for This American Life.
Black voice actors received higher aggregate scores, even from White panelists, even breaking down into categories of likeability, empowering, trustworthy or intent to listen to the podcast. Whereas Black respondents tend to rate ads higher when the voice actor is perceived to be Black, with White respondents there was little to no difference.
Neither race nor gender had an impact of ad effectiveness, although in the second experiment there was a rise in podcast listening because of the ads. So, if we’re hearing more Black voices, we’re creating the ads that have the potential to be judged more favorably by Black audiences without necessarily any negative impact on the effectiveness for any consumer group.
The ARF hosted its annual flagship conference, AUDIENCExSCIENCE 2023, on April 25-26, 2023. The industry’s biggest names and brightest minds came together to share new insights on the impact of changing consumer behavior on brands, insights into TV consumption, campaign measurement and effectiveness, whether all impressions are equal, join-up solutions across multiple media, the validity, reliability and predictive power of Attention measures, targeting diverse audiences, privacy’s effect on advertising and the impact of advertising in new formats. Keynotes were presented by Tim Hwang, author of Subprime Attention Crisis, Robert L. Santos of the U.S. Census Bureau, Brian Wieser of Madison and Wall, LLC and Andrea Zapata of Warner Bros. Discovery.
At ARF SHOPPER 2023, which took place in Chicago and virtually on March 9, the industry’s leading marketers and retailers came together to explore the latest research-based consumer insights, and how they are using this data to understand today’s shoppers, build innovative experiences and brand loyalty. Attendees learned about consumer behavioral shifts, how retail media networks are gaining traction in digital marketing strategies, and the latest shopping trends.
The event addressed how diversity in advertising is evolving. Consumers want to buy from companies that commit to diversity but mere representational presence in ads is not enough. Brands that produce creative that is authentic in context, and elicits emotion from consumers, will garner loyalty and ROI. Leaders from Microsoft and Kantar shared how we can collectively understand nuances better to debunk stereotypes and empower all groups of people.
