How To Make Any Ad Work Harder

The first time I came across the idea early in my career the Mad Men era was when I read a paper citing a finding from the radio era Horace Schwerin the father of modern ad pretesting reported that radio ads for foods andamp160beverages performed less well in fearproducing radio programsThat sent me off on a tack to analyze existing dayafter recall scores by Nielsen program types Results were mixed Later I realized that the Nielsen program types as useful as they are were not subtle enough for this particular taskYears later Nielsen NCS39s Leslie Wood reconfirmed that by showing Nielsen program types only accounted for 2 of ROI results although sitcoms did consistently outperform by 10 other program types for foods ampamp beverages echoing Schwerin to some degreeARF39s then CEO Gayle Fuguitt and ARF39s Horst Stipp made context effects a priority subject which it is still is the work being carried on today by ARF39s Cognition Council which is having a webinar on October 14 I highly recommend being one of the speakers The event extends beyond context effects to cover all aspects of ads and contexts which convey positive human values versus the oppositeThat39s the thingamp160ads and contexts work together The consumer never sees an ad naked except in outdoor In all other media the ad is seen within the body of some other content which has a substantial effect on how well or poorly the ad performsHorst summarized the accumulated wisdom of a half century of studies of this phenomenon by pointing out two strategies advertisersagencies can use to get their ads more attention and higher outcomes including sales and full funnel branding liftsFind programs which draw high attentiveness and place your ad there This tends to come with a cost since such programs tend to have higher CPMs because everyone knows they get high attentionFind programs which thematicallypsychologically align with your ad and put your ad there This tends to be CPMneutral In a case I39ll present in the ARF webinar on October 14 the top ten programs most aligned RMT calls it quotResonancequot with a particular PampampG spot had a CPM 13 below the average of all entertainment shows on broadcastcable network television according to Standard Media IndexSMI President Ben Tatta comments quotThe contextual impact of television is truly unrivaled and by combining RMT 39Resonance39 scores with SMI linear eCPM data buyers and sellers can now directly correlate the contextual impact and effective cost of every placement on the schedulequotThe combined SMIRMT data are extremely helpful in optimizing the brand resonance of linear campaigns by surfacing the most impactful and efficient network and program options available as we can see in the following tableAlignmentResonance is being practiced by RMT in TV and digital programmatically right now and is soon to expand into radio audioamp160and podcasts programmatically so it39s not added effort for overworked and underpaid media agencies Partner Semasio is an AI which brings RMT39s work to 22 countries so farAnother practitioner doing complementary work in the same field is Hindsight whichamp160uses AI to find perfectly aligned quotendemicquot is the word that springs to mind contexts in digital social influencer and other media buyable programmatically so that in microseconds an ad can be inserted into an environment that might just have been postedFor example as we all know legalized sports betting is suddenly a big spender on TV and here39s how an ad was automatically inserted into aligned content by Hindsight producing excellent results for the client OutkickquotBy implementing HSV39s Adaptive Ad Technology Outkick is able to deliver contextually relevant sports betting information to our large and loyal audiencequot said Clint Stapleton Director of Sports Betting at OutKick quotNot only is this a positive from a user experience perspective but it also allows us to extract more value out of our sports focused contentquotHindsight which is quite new has already launched brands in Music Fitness Cosmetics Sports Apparelamp160and Sports Betting Its founder Hersh Patel is in the 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 list and deserves to beAlignmentResonance is a virtually quotfreequot trick ie very little costadd to the CPM that can now be executed programmatically RMT third party ROI and branding lift results have been verified in double digits by Nielsen NCS 605amp160and Neustar Hindsight has a number of reference clients to attest to its addtoreturn on ad investmentThis simple method alignment to amplify the positive impact of your ads is worth a quick programmatic random control experiment Contextual alignment might be the biggest upside for the least effort and expense across the whole adtechmartech front which is full of promise and can lead to analysis paralysis As agile software development teaches us test early and oftenClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet

SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE MEDIAVILLAGE CONTENT | BECOME A THOUGHT LEADERSHIP CONTRIBUTOR

How To Make Any Ad Work Harder

Author

Publish date

Channel

Bill Harvey

SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE MEDIAVILLAGE CONTENT | BECOME A THOUGHT LEADERSHIP CONTRIBUTOR

How To Make Any Ad Work Harder

Enjoying This Commentary? There's More to Love

Bill Harvey

Stay in the know with more from MediaVillage

TAGS:

Cookies