Scott McDonald opened the session by discussing how the Census uses sample to correct for issues like undercounts in big data. Pete Doe (Nielsen) responded by commenting on persons who ask: do you have a Big Data solution or a panel solution? He doesn’t see it that way but rather you take all the signals you have and put them together in the best way for the problem at hand.
Jon Watts (CIMM) led a conversation with the CEOs of an organization that is helping to manage the JIC (OpenAP) and one that participates in it (the VAB), the EVP of an organization that does not belong to the JIC but has met with it and the CEO of the MRC. The participants clarified their relationships with each other, discussed Nielsen and expressed their hope for the future of television measurement.
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.
Brittany Slattery (OpenAP), who opened this discussion, explained that the new JIC was created by national programmers and media agencies for three main purposes: (1) To bring buyers and sellers to the table with equal voices; (2) To create baseline requirements for cross-platform measurement solutions and (3) To create a harmonized census-level streaming service data set across all of the programmers in the JIC. Fox, NBCU, Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery are all JIC members, as are Dentsu, Group M, IPG Mediabrands, OMG and Publicis. The members hope to foster competition among multiple ad video measurement currencies. After her introduction, Danielle DeLauro (VAB) moderated a discussion with the representatives of three networks and Group M.
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.
This ARF Pharma Council event followed up on the Council’s podcast episode on “Inclusive Futures of Humancare,” focusing on the importance of inclusiveness in pharma research and marketing with respect to both demographic characteristics and health conditions. Four speakers delivered brief presentations, followed by a discussion moderated by Pharma Council Co-Chair Marjorie Reedy of Merck.
Emily Kwok – Senior Director, Ad Experience Measurement, NBCU
NBCU’s Mike Levin and Emily Kwok tested brand safety in premium video content from a viewer perspective in their research using NBCU’s proprietary AI tech for automating brand safety and suitability decision making. The study’s three objectives asked whether increasingly violent episodes influence viewers’ experiences, if they then assign blame to marketers for knowingly advertising in explicit or violent content, and if there are specific instances where adjacency affects viewer sentiment towards an ad.
Measuring unconscious response to nine episodes across two seasons tagged with three levels of risk, facial coding and eye gaze technology, complemented by traditional surveys, captured the impact on a nationally representative sample of 1,800 respondents.
Finding that violent episodes maintained stable levels of attention, the study also determined that traces of negative emotion were scarcer in the more violent episodes.
Key Takeaways
From the mildest episodes to the most violent, viewer attention remained stable. Attention to high risk episodes measured in at 51.5%, with attention to low-risk episodes at 51.4%.
Viewers don’t attribute blame to advertisers. “There’s more reward than risk,” according to Emily. Viewers tend to enjoy brands that are sponsoring the content they love, controversial or not—8 in 10 agree that they don’t distrust brands that advertise in graphic TV shows.
Several rare cases where gratuitous violence immediately preceding an ad break did carry negative sentiment into the first seconds of the ad.
There are limitations in terms of measuring the emotional impact of video. Facial expressions are powerful. Neuroscience has proved that special parts of our brain is dedicated to faces. Development psychology also demonstrates the power of facial expressions. Consumer neuroscience also demonstrates the importance of faces. The question is whether Facial Action Coding System (FACS) is the best tool to measure consumers emotional response when viewing ads?
Nielsen IQ found that when you measure people’s facial expressions you need high quality videos, good lighting, algorithms. Nielsen IQ tests across over 2,000 ads in 15 countries. Initial R&D, global deployment, became a standardized diagnostic integrated with eye tracking. First phase found that facial expressions are only reproducible in strong and consistent moments. Happy is reproducible if it is really big, namely includes strong smiles. Negative emotions—reliability and reproducibility were as low as .25%. People watching TV, however, are mostly neutral. Reproducible expressions don’t occur often. Brain measure EEG, however, fluctuates much more and is highly dynamic. Put differently, there is a gap between facial expressions and EEG waves. Emotional expression does not equal emotion in the brain r=0.07.
Is FACS predictive of anything meaningful? NO! No significant relation between ad-driven sales lift and any emotional expression. Facial coding is not the right tool for the job of emotional response to video ads. It is not reproducible—when measured continuously, don’t get same answer twice; it is not sensitive—at reproducible levels, expressions are rare; it is not meaningful—expressions do not equal emotion and are not reflective of dynamic emotion in the brain; and not predictive—smiles do not equal sales and don’t correlate with outcomes.
Key Takeaways
Facial coding is not a good measure of measuring emotional response to video ads.
Only smiles were found to register in somewhat reliable manner with facial coding.
There is no significant relation between ad-driven sales lift and any emotional expression.
Johanna Welch – Global Mars Horizon Comms Lab Senior Manager, Mars
Mars and Realeyes prove connection between creative attention and sales performance. Mars’ Agile Creative Expertise (ACE) tool tracks visual attention and emotion responses to digital video ads. Visual attention AI and facial coding measures how long participants watch a video and how their attention changes as they watch. Proven this model to work—optimizing content, lifting sales up to 18% in 19 markets, $30 million in ad optimizations in 18 months.
ACE can 1. Predict sales accurately while learning how consumers behave and think. 2. Optimize—improve performance through creative selection. 3. Scale—establish a fast scalable solution. The model links attention, emotion and memory. Accordingly:
1. Attention is access to the brain and enables the brand to enter into consciousness.
2. Facial reactions—build memories.
3. Impact—higher consideration, conversions and sales.
ACE solution:
1. Participant exposure: 24-48 completion, 150-500 viewers from pool of +200m people. Observe people.
2. Attention detection: deep learning, collect viewer attention through natural viewer experience.
3. Actionable scores: ML and AI analytics to assess performance and deliver scores.
Company impact: validated predictions proved connections to behavioral and sales data via over 4,000 sales/ads data points and benchmarks. They also used ACE to improve performances for TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, achieving 18% cumulative sales lift. Global scale—scored over 1,000 creatives in 18 months. In conclusion, ACE is the biggest attention database, received U.S. patent for visual attention detection. Mars hopes to share ACE with other companies. And the next step is how to take a pre-testing tool to in-flight content and to examine brand equity.
Key Takeaways
Establishing the connection between creative attention and sales performance is key.
Mars’ Agile Creative Expertise (ACE) tool tracks visual attention as well as emotional responses to digital video ads.
Proven this model to work—optimizing content, lifting sales.