November 3, 2021
Creativity and Effectiveness in a Changing World
Orlando Wood – Chief Innovation Officer, System1
Summary:
Tracing technology’s disruption through time and its effects on the human psyche, Orlando Wood compared artwork from the 1400’s through the early 20th century to illustrate the emotional disconnect audiences are experiencing in today’s digital age. Wood described the sense of detachment, the loss of vitality, and the adversarial stance that characterized historic art and is evident in today’s advertising. Reconnecting the audience’s narrow focus to a broader beam of attention is possible for advertisers appealing to consumers’ right brain emotional response to faces, humor, and music.
Key takeaways:
- Campaigns with right brain creative approaches are more likely to establish brand trust and esteem by holding people’s attention with a broad human focus, where left brain creative’s narrow focus gets much less attention.
- Brand building campaigns are more important in this fragmented digital age, not less.
- Spend more on brand building campaigns, not less.
- Advertise with more vitality, more humor, more music – not less.
Welcome to the Attention Dimension: Fundamentals of Attention Metrics for Media
Marc Guldimann — Co-Founder and CEO of Adelaide; Co-Founder, The Attention Council
Summary:
The speaker, Marc Guldimann, founder of Parsec Media and co-founder Adelaide, is also a co-founder of The Attention Council. In his presentation he explained why he and the Council are promoting the use of attention metrics to help advertisers place ads into media environments that drive superior performance.
Ad impact is affected by media, creative, and relevance to the consumer. To optimize media, Marc argued, traditional measures have shortcomings: viewing duration, for example, does not have a linear relationship with outcomes. (Research shows the first seconds are usually more important.) He suggests that advertisers should optimize media by focusing on media quality and measure which media contexts help ads to get noticed and hold attention.
Marc described how his company develops models that quantify various contexts, generating data-driven insights around the quality of media that allow marketers to experiment and develop a media placement quality score that predicts business outcomes. (Note: Other attention measurement companies focus on optimizing creative with attention measurement.)
During the last couple of years, interest in attention measurement has grown rapidly and some advertisers have built attention guarantees into contracts.
Key takeaways:
- The Attention Council is promoting the development of attention measurement and the use of attention metrics by advertisers to optimize ad placement.
- The presenter argues that attention measures are superior to metrics such as duration and viewability based on many studies showing correlations between attention metrics and ad impact measures.
- Testing and the developments of models is recommended to optimize media spend towards placements in those media environments that show higher potential for attention.
Share of Search; one year on
James Hankins – Founder and Consulting Strategist, Vizer Consulting
Summary:
In 2020, Les Binet, Group Head of Effectiveness, adam&eveDDB, and James Hankins, Founder and Consulting Strategist, Vizer Consulting, explored the potential of search metrics to help track the health and future wealth of brands. In this 2021 presentation, James outlined 10 new insights from The IPA SoS Thinktank based on 30 case studies in 12 brand categories across seven countries, and two languages.
This session explored evidence and case studies of share of search (SoS) and its dynamic correlation to share of market (SoM). It is not a causality relationship. SoS is a proxy for the demand side of the marketing equation. The equation for SoS = Searches for brand X/Searches for all the brands in the competitor set.
The share of search analysis holds true across multiple categories, different business sizes, and for B2B and B2C brands. Share of Search provides the bases for growth rate analysis over time. Variance between SoS and SoM can be used to develop category-specific hypothesis on category dynamics. James pointed out that validation should be attempted, and appropriate levels of critical thinking applied when analyzing the data.
Key takeaways:
- SoS represents on average 83% of SoM. However, the range varies, and the relationship between SoS and SoM is dynamic. Other factors, such as distribution and a great sales team, can also drive market share.
- Broadcast/mass reach media appears to have a greater impact on SoS than narrowcast. Attention metrics are also a factor. SoS is a good proxy for aggregate mental availability.
- Spend, represented by share of voice (SoV) and extra share of voice (eSoV,) is generally related to SoS; however, analysis is required to understand category and brand dynamics. Extra share of search (ESoS) during COVID suggests these brands will grow more quickly and gain a higher SoM. However, strategy matters.
- Creative efficacy drives SoS more than media efficacy, but only slightly. On average, they are both important and demonstrate the multiplicity effect.
- Going dark seems to result in a consistent pattern of decline related to purchase frequency half-lives.
A New Metric for Brand Loyalty
Leslie Wood — Chief Research Officer, NCSolutions
Amy Crooks — Senior Manager, Research & Development, NCSolutions
Summary:
There have been dramatic changes in loyalty due to the pandemic, requiring a re-examination of the measures of loyalty, churn, and the value of new vs. loyal buyers. NCSolutions analyzed why it is important to compare loyalty measures longitudinally to gauge a brand’s health, as well as to understand which advertising and promotional strategies have been successful and to determine whether to focus on driving penetration or brand loyalty.
The presenters examined case studies for a baby food brand and a facial cleanser brand with the key metric of churn; a salty snack brand and a beer brand with the metric being depth of repeat purchases; and a frozen food brand with the key metric of YOY brand $/HH. The case studies examined different buyer cells for responses to the creative over time.
Key takeaways:
- The depth of repeat purchases (the sum of incremented, consecutive brand purchases) is central to the brand’s long-term health and a key measure used in measuring long-term effects of advertising. The higher the depth of repeat, the stronger the long-term effects and the higher the buying the following year. This measurement allows a household to be classified as loyal to more than one brand in the category.
- Brand loyalty metrics are very powerful and provide a dynamic view of the brand over time. The essential metrics to understand a brand’s buyer dynamics are churn, average depth of repeat, and YOY brand $/HH difference. Different scenarios call for the use of different metrics.
- The NCSolutions’ analyses and resulting insights enabled effective consumer targeting and adverting strategies to be developed. Great creative can drive customer retention and acquisition.
Live Commentary
Stephen DiMarco – Chief Digital Officer, Tubular Labs
Bill Hopkins – General Manager, Americas, System1
Summary:
Stephen DiMarco (Tubular Labs) and Bill Hopkins (System1) synthesized the day’s four sessions with a discussion of the overall arc and common threads within each topic. Acknowledging how disruption from the pandemic and other changes in the media landscape have affected the industry, the speakers provided evidence and data for a path forward.
These sessions all had elements of building a bridge between what’s happening in society and culture today and where they manifest in advertising.
Key takeaways:
- Cornerstone of all presentations was technological disruption, and how history continues to teach that creative can be reset to generate broad beam of attention, which can then be manifested in elements of creative, media, share of search, and ultimately, business effects.
- Apart from business impacts, we need to make sure we are reinforcing the positive aspects of humanity in our advertising. Growth will come through attention and relevance to people – and we need to see them as people. Starting with emotion, which leads to attention, and then it leads to behavior—whether search or buying behavior.
- We as advertisers need to dig deeper into the misunderstood, underrepresented, and critical minority segments for business growth, one of the few growing U.S. populations.
- Depth of repeats or stickiness in brand loyalty in a changing world with supply side constraints is going to become even more important.
- Generate long-term gains rather than digital short-termism that just disrupts. Look at technological disruption as an opportunity for long term branding. Focus on creative that engages consumers and it will manifest as attention, share of search, and brand loyalty.
November 4, 2021
What’s at The Frontier of Our New Cookie-less and First Party Data World?
Andy Brown – Strategic Advisor, Andrew Brown Associates
Summary:
Looking into developments around brand tracking, Andy Brown (Strategic Advisor, Andrew Brown Associates) found it became impossible not to address how technological and digital ecosystem changes are impacting the ability to track brands and media. In the way that digital technology changed how and what was measured, it also changed all the norms and opened up the market to measure consumer behaviors with new tools and methodologies.
Because many of these trends were driven by cookies, the fundamental changes brought about by legislation from GDPR and CCPA as well as Google’s and Apple’s third-party data deprecation have created more hurdles for the measurement industry. Although first-party data will remain, it will only show part of the market. Andy outlined five important components of the new privacy ecosystem: permission, data integration, modelling/AI, experimentation, and collaboration.
Implications for the industry for brand tracking:
- Gathering a holistic view will continue to be possible as brand tracking measurement will need to be supplemented with other short-term metrics.
- Growth in ROI being sold by media vendors as part of ad packages will be extended to TV.
- Greater use of AI to interpret and predict performance going forward.
- Increase in real time measurement of traditional media like TV should continue to be on the radar.
Implications from loss of cookies:
- Greater use of first-party data in targeting and evaluation.
- A smaller number of research vendors directly integrated with key digital and TV platforms.
- Permissions from consumer panelists becomes essential to driving the ability to track.
- Deterministic ROI at individual levels will be almost impossible, and many will resort to higher level analyses like MMM (market mix modeling).
From a measurement industry point of view, the industry has to be at the forefront and develop future proof solutions. The ecosystem is always changing and as fast as a solution is found, another will have to be built to solve for the next evolution of tech.
Will Privacy Laws Kill Digital ROI Effectiveness Measurement?
Data and analytics specialist Simeon Duckworth, University College, London, chaired an industry panel exploring Andy Brown’s presentation on What’s at The Frontier of Our New Cookie-less and First Party Data World? Additionally, the panel analyzed the implications of the current changes in digital data availability. The following are edited highlights from the conversation:
- The panelists expressed optimism about the prospect of a more privacy-safe ad measurement world, despite the tectonic plates of privacy and regulations causing uncertainty. John (Tesco) is optimistic at the macro level. Measurement existed before cookies. MMM and other techniques will be used going forward. There will be a loss of micro-level measurements, but we can get around it. Maren (Analytic Partners) is optimistic, and she expressed the need for openness to new ways to experiment, inform ourselves, and take actions. There is a global tussle between more surveillant cultures and the individual’s desire for privacy, according to Nadim (ProQuo AI). However, now is the time to understand how communications creates bonds between brands and consumers. He is also optimistic.
- The loss of cookies measurement poses challenges in terms of measuring advertising effectiveness. Cookies allowed for proper causal experiments and measurement. However, randomized control experiment will go away with the loss of cookies. Maren replied out that cookies were fast and cheap and gave the illusion of accurate measurement. It’s time to let go of user-level tracking. The death of cookies represents a milestone on the way to a privacy-focused environment. It will focus attention on the measurement alternatives and these alternatives will require privacy consent. There has been a renewed interest in MMM, which is broader, deeper and faster today than in the 1990’s. Analytic Partners argued that a combination of approaches is the solution going forward. However, there was concern expressed that that these solutions proposed sound expensive.
- There is a new generation of people grappling with brands. How should the research industry change to measure these drivers? Nadim stated that he has a fundamental question about the existential continuity of the research industry. Analysis of brands and actions of brands are seamless. Adjusting the marketing levers for optimal performance leads to more than 2 billion configurations. AI can uncover the causative links between action recommended and outcome achieved. AI can serve as a data scientist to develop the best configuration of marketing levers positive outcomes of marketing investments. Robots will be in the service of humans in marketing.
- Collaboration is needed to solve advertising effectiveness measurement. Will we work together rather than in silos? Advertising has decreasing credibility, although it still has a role (Nadim). He stressed the importance of the brand-consumer relationship. Collaboration is important and will get more interesting. Companies are building consumer graphs spliced with brand graphs. The collision of data will lead to collaborative efforts. Developing meaningful cross-channel measurement, de-duplication improvements can be developed together (John). Learning across brands, sharing wisdom, insights, and pooling information represents a big opportunity, Maren concluded.
Cookie-less Audience Targeting and Attribution: A Pharma Case Study
Joy Joseph – Chief Data & Analytics Officer (US), Initiative Media
Summary:
While attribution has been around two decades, a great breakthrough for digital, the deprecation of third party cookies is likely to have a significant impact. Options to MTA include: walled gardens, focused on one channel only, and data clean rooms such as those operated by the identity companies. Cleanrooms are data intensive but much better than single channel walled gardens.
However, pharma is a unique category because of its privacy restrictions. A third model is an extension of the clean room approach. Google’s Ads Data Hub lets you integrate your data with segments of 50 persons so there is no identifiable information. The data are analyzed as groups of people and so it is similar to MMM but with more granular data, as MMM operates on data such as GRPs and ratings.
Joy showed an example of their analysis of some 45 campaigns: where their lifts were, they found significant differences in the lifts by publisher. Optimizing on these findings, they were able to drive a 1.7x increase in ROAS. Real time optimizations were hence possible despite the deprecation of third party cookies. Next steps for this approach will be predictive audience activation to score audiences for remarketing and propensity based targeting.
Key takeaways:
- Clean rooms are an option to walled gardens in the face of third party cookie deprecation.
- Initiative has had much success using Google’s Ads Data Hub to conduct a much more granular version of MMM.
- Importing much of your data and integrating with segments within the hub yielded real opportunities to optimize, even real time, resulting in a 1.7 lift in ROAS.
- Initiative will be further developing this model to permit predictive audience activation.
Leading the Next Frontier of Media Disruption
Marc Pritchard – Chief Brand Officer, Procter & Gamble
Scott McDonald, Ph.D. – CEO and President, ARF
Summary:
Scott introduced Marc Pritchard to the ARF stage with a discussion about the most important marketing and advertising measurement challenges in the industry and Procter & Gamble’s priorities in approaching solutions. While the perpetual fragmentation of the media ecosystem is complicating accurate measurement across platforms, advertisers still have the same simple questions, according to Marc. The consumer is the center of it all – how many people are advertisers reaching, how often are they reaching them, and how effective and efficient is the advertising itself?
In a call to action for all marketers, Marc urged the industry to innovate a consumer-centric measurement that focuses on the most important outcome for advertisers: the superior consumer experience and the communication of that experience. While still trying to reach as many people as possible with greater precision, the P&G exec believes measurement of that experience has to answer three crucial questions:
- Is it an objective measurement with an independent, third-party, accredited verification of that reach, frequency, effectiveness & efficiency?
- Is it transparent , with a clear understanding of shared rules?
- Is it complete for the consumer’s experience across multiple platforms, factoring for different experiences and context?
The following are edited highlights from the conversation:
- It is incumbent on marketers to lead the way in terms of measurement – with work from within, inclusive of publishers and platforms to broadcasters, and led by the trade associations – to achieve an objective view. This requires innovation from both individual companies and measurement entities to achieve an understanding of consumer behavior and experience.
- It all comes back to the consumer when advertisers’ needs for identity solutions might contradict ensuring consumer privacy and content choices. Marc recommended two key approaches:
- Focus on 1st party data. Give consumers the privacy they want and the value that they need so they are willing to exchange their data with permission. In an example from Pampers, Marc cited how the brand’s 1 to 1 consumer engagement delivered a value exchange that provided P&G with a deep understanding of those consumers and what they needed.
- There is not one solution, but there are some good solutions that allow mass reach with greater precision. Not on a 1 to 1 basis, not generic A18-49, but more of a precise cohort approach that enables the ability to access relevant data.
- Measurement should help advertisers recognize that every medium has a different context so they can place ads knowing their effectiveness in that context with the ability to remove excessive frequency.
- Consumer experience can be a poor experience: Seven out of ten consumers are annoyed by ad frequency and 53% of consumers feel it hurts brand equity if they see the same ad over and over again. A good experience for consumers is a valuable experience.
Live Commentary
Gaz Alushi – Global Head of Measurement Research and Development, Snap, Inc.
Megan Margraff – VP, Data Strategy, Oracle Advertising
Summary:
Megan Margraff, Oracle Advertising, and Gaz Alushi at Snap, Inc., summarized their key takeaways and observations from today’s sessions. The following are edited highlights from the conversation:
- Brands must provide good experiences for consumers. The industry is still trying to solve fundamental questions about reaching consumers.
- Consumers are currently opting out because they don’t understand the value exchange. Permission data is valuable; however, the value exchange needs to be better communicated to consumers. The industry needs to collaborate to provide transparency for consumers.
- Reconciling targeting and privacy remains challenging. The industry needs to bring together the deep granular signals with siloed data. However, no current solutions are sufficient.
- 2022-2023 will be a period of increased privacy regulations. Brands will move away from user-level tracking to cohorts and aggregate data. There is an increased role for modeling, panels, and more census data. Flexible analytic models are needed. Analysis paralysis must be avoided.
- More brands will take control of their data. Brands can share data without leakage, while respecting privacy.