How Online Technology Spurs Media and Creative Ad Effectiveness -- Graeme Hutton

Online technologies are creating a seismic shift in ad effectiveness research and spurring it towards an inferential approachA longstanding public example of the inferential approach has been Harvardamp8217s IATs Implicit Association Tests implicitharvardedu You can see this indirect technique in action about you personally by taking one of the tests An IAT can reveal your real inner feelings about any topic from race or mental health to pets in the home It does this not from your actual responses but by interrogating to the millisecond speed of your replies on your computer An IAT can potentially lay bare previously unknown insights about youInnovations in online technology have started to accelerate the value and adoption of the inferential approach in ad effectiveness research Using the same overall audiencebuilding principles as digital and programmatic buying these new methods often offer ultrashort surveys sometimes comprising just one or two questions Importantly these approaches help counter a serious burgeoning issue facing researchers and marketers alike tumbling survey response ratesSurvey Response Rates Fall amp8220Dramaticallyamp8221Timepressed consumers have become increasingly exasperated by fringe marketing tactics from spam to unwanted online video ads automatically playing to amp8220 suggingamp8221 Sugging refers to amp8220selling under the guise ofamp8221 and it occurs when less scrupulous marketers pretend to be conducting a survey when in fact they are simply trying to sell the product in question In short consumers have become wary of the unsolicited solicitorConsumer misgivings about commercial intrusiveness into their personal lives mean survey response rates are sinking The Pew Research Center agrees amp8220response rates have fallen dramaticallyamp8221 documenting that response rates have fallen by 75 since the late 1990sEnter the ShortForm Question SurveyIn response to consumersamp8217 declining enthusiasm to answer marketersamp8217 questionnaires Google Consumer Surveys have shown that one or two survey questions not only can offer a substantial lift in response rates of 18 23 they can also be validated to be more accurate than conventional internet panels for consumer benchmarks such as incidence of technology eg satellite dish ownership or public health levels eg daily cigarette smoking They do this by applying the targeting principles of digital behavioral buying and retargeting to probe a respondentamp8217s IP address and cookiesAs a general principle this approach could help reveal much of a consumeramp8217s demographic and related behavioral activities such as interests hobbies and purchase intentIn practice Google has expanded their shortform surveys to be able to include up to 10 questions via their online technology If more than 10 questions are required a separate questionnaire is issued with similar screening questions on product usage etc which along with demographic postsurvey stratification ensure data compatibilityUMamp8217s Audience Measurement Platform AMP also harnesses an inferential approach AMP implicitly tracks when respondents have been exposed to a TV ad or visited a web site AMP doesnamp8217t have to ask panelists if they have seen the ad and as a consequence it avoids the typical issue of respondent misattribution about exactly which ads they have seen and their subsequent digital behaviors As a result AMP questionnaires can comprise just three or four questions to provide crossplatform ad exposures and their effectiveness for both TV and onlineIdentifying Campaign Communications Issues BEFORE They HappenNot so long ago was a nearidyllic time for researchers If a researcher could succinctly pinpoint in her postcampaign analysis why a campaign did or did not work she could be lionized for her wisdom and perceptiveness That eraamp8217s shelf life has well and truly expired Today that researcher additionally needs to demonstrate that the research investment has actually helped the campaign achieve its goals not just why it may have succeeded or otherwiseIn response to this need the last four years have seen the rise of realtime online optimization techniques which track consumer attitudinal responses for instance awareness and purchase intent They were pioneered for online activity but are starting to apply across other media Not only can we see which sites work best but also which creative messages This goes beyond proxies such as click optimization to provide specific diagnostic creative messaging optimizationApplying this approach to a product such as Googleamp8217s Brand Lift for YouTube for example creative messaging elements can be optimized such as determining the optimum ad timelength and if the brandamp8217s logo should appear earlier in the ad For creative agencies circumspect of ad messaging pretests inmarket online optimization provides a fasttrack realworld alternativeCreative messaging optimizations know precisely which element of the decision process they are affecting One of the online leaders in this area has been Insight Express with its campaign insights dashboard but the new kid on the block is Extreme Reach Extreme Reach offers shortform online surveys sometimes just one question as part of their online video ad serving Extreme Reach has an active growing panel of 18 million where it knows the exact composition of its panel By serving the ad in parallel with the survey and providing sufficient ad weight is achieved it can track ad effectiveness in near real timeOnline Research Technology Fuels Proactive Management of TVRapid online weekly tracking can also impact TV campaigns Online trackers measuring TVamp8217s impact on the whole decision process up to the nearpurchase of the product can release their finalized weekly data on the next working day By passively tracking the exposure on a weekly basis and relating it to the consumer response we can impute the relative rate of consumer reactions and the possible lag in that responseIn one example earlier this year the UM research team actively monitored a lowweight TV campaign using a weekly online tracker Twothirds of the way through our weekly tracking we were able to determine the campaign was not meeting its communication KPIs We alerted the media investment team and the client and recommended rearranging both the remaining weeks of activity and the weekly weights Through the research teamamp8217s proactive weekly management the impact per GRP for an acidtest metric such as the brand being a prospectamp8217s First Choice improved by 17Innovations in online technology have propelled inferential research approaches to exciting new heights Not only are these technology innovations typically cheaper and swifter they are helping overcome the issue of crumbling survey response rates they can directly quantify improvements in creative messaging and they enable proactive campaign management with real and measurable improvements These and upcoming innovations may yet make it front and center of the industryamp8217s overall research approachGraeme Hutton is SVP Group Partner Research at UM Graeme came from the UK to the US in the late 90s and his only regret is that he did not do it sooner Graeme joined UM in 2006 At UM he has engineered and activated a broadbased set of integrated communications and consumer insight tools which dovetail into the agencyamp8217s burgeoning arsenal of media research products and systems Graeme can be reached at GraemehuttonumwwcomRead all Graeme39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Curious Thoughts from Curious MindsCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates at MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentariesamp160amp160amp160

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