Aaron Hoffman, Ph.D. (Magid), Gregg Liebman (NBCUniversal)
This new research is the largest study on the effects of the context in which advertising is embedded on the ad, in 60 years of published context effects research. The study focused on TV shows as ad context and tested 60 ads in 31 programs after an even larger pre-test.
The premise of this research was that TV’s ability to emotionally connect with consumers is not being fully maximized by advertisers and that taking advantage of the interplay between the emotions that attract viewers to a show and the emotions evoked by the ad can generate improved ad “receptivity”, including more purchase intent.
Among the study’s key findings:
- Targets, scale, and demographics make up only part of the equation when it comes to good media buys. Context and emotional connections matter.
- Ads, like TV shows, elicit rich emotional responses that can be measured.
- Some ad emotions yield better ad performance than others.
- Taking advantage of the interplay between show and ad emotions (“emotional alignment”) is likely to result in greater ad impact.
- Stronger emotional matches between shows and ads lead to superior results.