HOLY GRAIL! New Understanding of Advertising Value & Effectiveness Discovered

Originally Published: April 25, 2006

The Five Dimensions of Advertising Effectiveness

After seven years of market research and nearly 15 years of industry analysis, Jack Myers Media Business Report this week is sharing with subscribers exclusive insights that explain new in-depth definitions of advertising effectiveness and methodologies for measuring them. Myers Five Dimensions of Advertising Effectiveness provide a construct within which all current media research and marketing mix methodologies and suppliers, syndicated and custom, can comfortably fit. provide a construct within which all current media research and marketing mix methodologies and suppliers, syndicated and custom, can comfortably fit. Details on each of these dimensions are outlined in this report.

Based on research conducted among 18,000 adults and 3,000 teens since 1999, Myers has identified five dimensions of advertising that, in combination, offer a complete perspective on advertising effectiveness. The Myers Emotional Connections™ Consumer Studies, provide insights on three of the five dimensions. These studies currently focus on individual TV programs with plans to expand their scope to include online and print in 2007.

Historical Perspective
In the 1950s, General Electric's research guru Herbert Krugman identified three dimensions of advertising impact:

1. awareness
2. interest
3. retention.

For nearly three decades, Krugman's work formed the basis of most advertising effectiveness theory and was the foundation for media planners' number one priority: achieving a three times weekly exposure frequency to achieve message retention.

In 1981, Bruce Eckman, a research executive at Backer & Spielvogel Agency and professor at the New School for Social Research, at the request of CBS-TV Stations' Retail Sales Group (then headed by Jack Myers), expanded Krugman's theory to incorporate two added dimensions of advertising impact:

4. persuasion
5. motivation.

Eckman's report was used by several leading retailers and direct marketers to increase frequency goals and it introduced return-on-investment objectives to media planning models for the first time.

In the 1990s, Syracuse University's John Phillip Jones and consultant Erwin Ephron advanced a theory of "recency" media planning that argued for reduced frequency, making the case that a single exposure close to the time of purchase was the ultimate goal of a media campaign. Essentially, recency theory is consistent with Krugman and Eckman, but focuses on "awareness," the first level of advertising impact, as the primary objective of advertising campaigns.

Recency theory argues for minimal commercial repetition and encourages sustained high reach among target audiences. Recency has been the mainstay of media planning and optimization programs for the past decade. It has been a boon for broadcast networks and has contributed to the slow shift of ad dollars to cable networks even as their audiences have surpassed broadcast networks. Unfortunately, recency has also probably resulted in a reduction of advertising effectiveness by focusing marketers and media buyers on basic awareness and away from retention, persuasion and motivation.

Myers Five Dimensions of Advertising Effectiveness

Myers Five Dimensions of Advertising Effectiveness are designed to serve the needs of marketers; media agency planners and buyers; creative, talent, event and marketing agencies; media sellers and investors as they adapt to the new landscape that is quickly forcing changes to the business models in place in the advertising business for nearly 50 years.

Myers Five Dimensions of Advertising Effectiveness are:

• Audience Reach
• Audience Engagement with Content
• Audience Attentiveness and Responsiveness to Advertising
• Friends & Family Environment
• Commerce & Direct ROI

These five dimensions have been identified through an extensive seven-year study of audiences' perceptions of and attitudes toward TV networks and programs. Through factor analysis, Myers' analysts have narrowed the dimensions of advertising impact and discovered constant patterns of consumer involvement and emotional connection. Each of these dimensions are explored in detail in this report.

Myers Five Dimensions of Advertising Effectiveness acknowledge marketers' continued dependence on traditional reach-based advertising models while supplementing them with enhanced insights for identifying and valuing media partners who offer the most compatible environment for highly targeted messages, alliances, partnerships and sponsorships.

New Media Trends Require New Measurement Strategies

Myers Five Dimensions of Advertising Effectiveness represents the first update to the original Krugman and Eckman theories since 1981. They refocus media planners away from issues exclusively related to reach and frequency and focus them instead on:

• the depth and intensity of the emotional connection of media with their audiences,
• how closely marketers are seeking to connect with the audiences they reach,
• how actionable they intend their advertising campaigns to be.

While researchers continue to actively seek the silver bullet of ad effectiveness, the guidelines have actually existed for years in the Krugman/Eckman model, which Myers has updated to reflect more contemporary consumer perceptions and patterns. Before developing media, marketing and creative plans, marketers need to first define their objectives on the five-point Myers scale. They can then apply a variety of methodologies to assess how effectively their media and marketing choices deliver on those objectives.

The core metric used for recency planning, audience size, plays right into the quantitative strengths of Nielsen and traditional research services, while neatly eliminating issues of return-on-investment and effectiveness.

By relying almost exclusively on basic audience size metrics for the past 50 years, marketers have failed to gain insights on their campaign's performance in generating engagement, attentiveness, responsiveness and commerce, which could also be defined as Krugman's and Eckman's retention, persuasion and motivation. The growing emphasis on recall and attentiveness through a variety of research providers such as IAG reflects a recognition of this need.

It's especially interesting to note the emergence in the Myers research of "comfort viewing a program with family" and "enjoyment viewing a program with friends" as similar but differentiated dimensions of advertising effectiveness. The research establishes that audiences' perceptions of media are impacted by family friendly issues, and marketers who consider this to be an issue have the opportunity to define and value their media choices accordingly.

• Media planning in the next several years will become far more sophisticated.
• The simple reach/frequency curves and theories of the past and present cannot hope to serve all the needs that will be required in the future.
• Recency theory will not disappear from media planning, but it will be progressively diminished in its relevance and usage, even as media technologies deliver a wealth of new behavioral media exposure data.
• Media research will evolve to embrace new measures that go beyond audience reach and focus on "engagement with content," "attentiveness and responsiveness to advertising," "family & friends environment," and "direct ROI-based currencies."

For more information, or to comment on this report, contact Jack Myers at jm@jackmyers.com