The ARF Knowledge Center provides secondary research services for ARF and ARF-MSI members on a broad range of topics. Analysis of ARF member questions posed to the Knowledge Center in 2023 shows distinct trends and interests posed by different constituent members. As always, most questions tend to be specific to the unique business needs of each member, but there were some overarching trends, which highlight the evolving landscape of the marketing and advertising industry. This FAQ discusses these trends alongside sample member questions and Knowledge Center research reports.
Audio is a daily ritual at the heart of the day. With the richness of audio experiences, should brands strive for contextual alignment? But what is contextual alignment? There are two types: Genre based—aligning with audio content genre that is contextually relevant to the brand; Ritual based—aligning with audio ritual/behavior that is contextually relevant to the brand. Methodology: a controlled test to quantify the impact of genre and ritual-based contextual alignment; recruitment of weekly audio listeners from a representative online panel, listening to content that they chose for roughly 30 mins. Listeners then answered brand metric questions to determine ad effectiveness.
Findings:
Ads in context perform better. The brands feel more relevant.
Audio with Rituals in context taps into purchase and genuine interest in the product.
Listeners feel more connected to the brand when hearing contextually aligned ads.
Listeners who felt energized or excited were more receptive to the ad. Audio during rituals get people motivated and more open to noticing ads.
Implications:
Ensure contextual targeting is a part of your digital audio planning to drive transactional next steps.
Explore rituals to reach a highly engaged audience and amplify the effectiveness of your audio.
Audacy came out with a campaign to promote the Audacy app across radio stations: four markets, 22 stations, 20 unique promos, during six weeks of media. Findings show that the rituals campaign worked—increases in app downloads are directly attributable to the rituals campaign. The campaign particularly influenced heavy radio listeners, parents, 35-54 and cross-platform listeners.
Key takeaways:
Audio rituals works.
Audio rituals targeting works.
There is a way to further slice and be more precise with audio.
Lumen and Dentsu measured attention in audio. Audio is obviously a key component, but the main challenge is how to create attention metrics for audio that can be comparable to visual? Can eye tracking be applied to audio, and if so how? Previous research shows that ads have to be noticed to drive results. Not necessarily looked at. There is a need for some form of attention to make ads work. Seventy percent of viewable ads are not viewed and as such do not sell. Research also shows that longer ads drive better outcomes in terms of prompted recall and choice uplift. Visual eye movements are a part of this but only the first part of the process that may lift to memory and action. At Lumen they measure 1) how many ads are viewable for the user; 2) whether they are viewable (=MRC); 3) % viewed; 4) view time in seconds; 5) APM in seconds; 6) cost per attentive impression. Eye tracking works by taking videos of eyes while on screen—simple behavioral metric. After this they ask questions and understand the relationship between eye movements and other measures.
Audio works differently. We lack information about the percent of people who listened and average listening time, but we can infer from visual attention. This is, thus, an audio-visual equivalence. How much visual attention would generate same recall from audio? According to the presenters, inferential model seems to work quite well. They infer likely levels of audio attention from several factors: exposure time, brand recall, choice uplift, forced vs. voluntary.
Methodology: They measured people listening to radio, podcasts and streaming audio services. There were three forms of audio advertisements, thousands of people from whom to collect audio and recall data and infer how much visual attention would have been needed to do the same.
Finding: Attention metrics are equivalent for audio. This data is built into Dentsu’s planning tools when their trading teams are contemplating which media to buy. The research shows that audio generates attention at a lower cost. In a digital world, it is about measuring live campaigns, and planners and clients are used to getting impression-level data about viewability or audibility. Audio industry has the ability to supply this data. Individual data on podcasts and streaming could help demonstrate the true power of audio campaigns. Challenge to industry: now that the potential power has been demonstrated we need to get impression level data to be able to measure live campaigns.
Key takeaways:
Radio is an extremely cost-effective way of reaching people and driving outcomes.
We have benchmarks, we want measurement, we need impression-level data.
Combine attention data with outcomes data to tell a compelling story.
Pierre Bouvard – Chief Insights Officer, Cumulus Media | Westwood One
The presentation focused on determining the emotional impact of AM/FM radio ads. MediaProbe was retained by Cumulus Media to measure second-by-second electrodermal activity (EDA)—a measure of the sympathetic nervous system, to see when it is activated, whether listeners were excited by the stimulus they heard. This is termed Emotional Impact Score (EIS)—an impact metric that can help understand how excited people are on a second-by-second basis and what are the elements that drive this emotion. This is an objective way of quantifying emotion in media and advertising content, capturing the emotional implicit data (what people feel). Throughout the session, participants can also dial those moments that they like/dislike—the conscious explicit capture of likes and dislikes, and are asked pre and post session questions to learn more about recall and purchase intent.
Methodology: 36 AM/FM radio ads, in a simulated broadcast of 30 minutes across four genres (urban, news, adult contemporary and rock/oldies). Each “broadcast” had three ad breaks and the average commercial break had three ads. Also, 227 people participated. Each “broadcast” had a sample size of 75 people and consumers listened to at least three of the four broadcasts. Each ad was exposed to 225 people.
Findings:
AM/FM radio programming outperforms MediaProbe’s U.S. TV norms by 13%. Put differently, the emotional impact score is higher when listening to radio.
Carry over effect: radio advertising commercial pods receive 12% higher Emotional Impact Score over TV advertising commercial pods, making radio a premium platform.
Across genres, people are more engaged when listening to news—people are processing what is being said, they are paying attention. There is no valence contamination between what is being said on the news and the emotional engagement to ads.
People are more engaged during radio advertising—4% more than radio content.
Looking at 32 individual MediaProbe ads, there is on average a 5% higher emotional impact score in comparison to 4,670 individual MediaProbe TV ads. This research is consistent with other lab-based studies.
MediaProbe also conducted a physical feature analysis of the creative to find that: 1) higher pitch contrast between programming content and ads leads to higher impact. If the content has low pitch, ads should be higher pitch and vice-versa; 2) louder ads lead to higher impact.
Using a regression analysis, MediaProbe found the following best performing creative in radio ads: 1) female voiceover; 2) with jingles/with background music; 3) five brand mentions are optimal; 4) no disclaimers. This too is consistent with other research.
Key takeaways:
AM/FM radio programming is more engaging than TV, according to MediaProbe
They also found that AM/FM radio advertising outperforms TV advertising.
News is the most impactful genre as a high-quality contextual environment for advertising.
Sound contrast between radio programming and ads drives higher attention and brand recall.
Creative best practices: female voiceover, jingles, one voiceover and five brand mentions.
Sandra Schümann – Senior Advertising Researcher, RTL Data & Screenforce
Marvin Vogt – Senior Research Consultant, eye square
Screenforce conducted a series of studies beginning in 2020, examining reach, success, mapping moods and impact in relation to attention. They mapped the impact by investigating when does which type of communication work best and why? There were 8,304 ad contacts in-home, 285 participants in a natural way (living rooms). They also examined 64 brands in three countries. The largest media ethnographic study in Europe examined usage situations and scenarios. There were four different scenarios: 1) Busy Day scenario (2-6PM Mon-Fri, people are distracted and focused on other things), 2) Work is Done (after 6PM, first lower part of concentration, seeking for better mood), 3) Quality Time (8-10PM, prime time, high activation of quality time, “Super Bowl moment,” high focus on screen), 4) Dreaming Away (10PM-1AM, typically alone, before sleep, dreamlike situation). Each of the 64 ads was tested in all four scenarios. The study included a technical objective criteria, subjective feeling and creative approaches. Eye square found a way where no additional material is needed other than an instruction book, webcam and GSR.
Key findings:
Visual attention is highest at late night (86%). Recall for ads works best in evening (75% Quality Time and Dreaming Away). However, advertising is shown to fit better earlier in the day.
Characteristics per scenario: spot liking rises when using brand jingle (audio) in Busy Day scenario. This is because during the Busy Day scenario people are distracted and the jingle can help retain their focus.
On a Busy Day, use strong brands with strong branding. When work is done, use ads to create a good mood. During Quality Time, it’s time for the big stories. During Dreaming Away, less is more.
In sum, it is possible to find out which scenario works best for the spot and optimize the ads and find the best possible time and spot to air the ad.
Key takeaways:
TV ads have a strong effect, but there are ways to improve this impact.
Usage scenarios of audience has impact on ad effectiveness.
TVs can achieve a higher effect if they take the usage scenario into account.
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.
MediaCell is an app that transforms a smartphone, tablet, or laptop into a passive portable audiometer. It also captures on-device consumption of audio and video. It is currently deployed in panels in the U.K. and Australia and will soon by deployed in South Africa. Ipsos is working with Kantar to use MediaCell in the Netherlands to produce the radio currency there. Its audio measurement capabilities are based on ACR technology. It is easy to on-board panelists; Jim noted that there were no breaks in the data in their U.K. panel due to the pandemic.
Nielsen uses the Portable People Meter (PPM) to passively measure audiences for radio and to enhance its national and local TV ratings. It is now testing a new wearable device to replace the PPM to measure audio and to replace button-pushing to measure person-level television audiences. The new wearable is intended to enable cross-platform measurement of audio and video. Two other pieces of equipment accompany the device – a beacon to allow Nielsen to distinguish between in-home and out-of-home exposure and a data hub to transmit the data back to Nielsen. Another component of the wearable system is a mobile app which will enable engagement and communication with Nielsen and can also be used to transmit data back to Nielsen.
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.
