ARF: The Two Media Strategies for Ad Attention

The first strategy is to find environments programs websites magazines etc that have high attentiveness in themselves In television for example it has been known for 60 years that highrated programs tend to garner more attention from their viewers than lowerrated programs At the time this was first discovered quothigh ratingquot meant quotabove 180quot and today it means quotabove 15quotThat39s the main reason why high rated programs charge and get a higher CPM Another important reason is the prestige value to the retail channels the brand usesamp160to stockholders and to the families of employeesSome typical types of highrated programs are sports primetime and broadcast although that is too broad a generalization for best results as attentiveness varies by programHighly correlated with high ratings is the emotional sentiment of liking Programs considered quotOne Of My Favoritesquot get higher ratings and higher attention The liking causes the ratings and the attention Sixtyamp160years ago some agencies used TVQ scores as a media impact weight to justify buying higher CPM programs based upon quotCPM ImpactquotNote that this first strategy quotHigh Attention Environmentquotamp160works independently of the specific creative execution Its attention effects work on all creative The great thing about this strategy is that it does work The rub is that using this strategy tends to increase CPM which reduces the number of impressions so that you get more attention but from fewer people per dayThe second strategy also works and it turns out to be CPM neutral Horst calls this second strategy quotAlignmentquotamp160Former ARF CEO Jim Spaeth calls it quotEmotional Congruencequot and former head of research at Turner Howard Shimmel calls it quotResonancequotamp160What it signifies is that the specific creative execution has some special similarity to the environment For example a funny ad works better in a funny showKwon et al in another Journal of Advertising Research paper metaanalyzed 70 studies of alignment consistently finding about 15 more ad recall and other such communications measures Each study had its own content codes by which to determine the degree of alignment between an ad and a program eg happysad funnyserious etc Typically in such studies only one univariate dimension was used to classify the ads and the programsUnlike the first strategy the alignment strategy is not creativeindependent Alignment is in relation to the specific creative execution Because this way of looking at things was not considered historically in the pricing of media in fact with so many different creative executions changing all the time how could it ever have been factored into media pricing the alignment strategy is CPM neutralHoward Shimmel was the first person to see the application of DriverTags to the alignment strategy Howard was head of research at Turner at the time 2018 RMT DriverTags Reset Digital offers them in its Neurocognitive Programmatic product are the 265 psychological dimensions my 1990s company Next Century Media had discovered drive and explain 76 of all TV program choices Howard postulated that comparing multivariate dimensions instead of one univariate dimension in executing an alignment strategy ought to work even better raising attentiveness and ad recall and perhaps persuasion and even sales effectSponsoring a test of his idea Nielsen NCS found that alignment using DriverTags raises sales effect more than 20 a lot better than raising mere ad recall 15 605 a year later with a large survey of 23000 people replicated the findings using branding metrics revealing a 62 increase in first brand mention and a lift of 37 in purchase intent So alignment is a valuable attention strategy because it works and it is CPM neutralJumping back to the first strategy because digital is a very different medium from television except for premium digital video attention is a special problem in digital as users are more adavoidant in digital today there are CPMneutral ways of finding higher attention environments in digital This is because there are variables which can be discovered by years of practice that impede and lower attentiveness and one can detect these in the milliseconds available before a programmatic bid has to be made The company leading this charge is Adelaide a spinoff from Parsec a programmatic company that charged by viewing seconds and so had an economic incentive to root out the fingerprints of high vs low attentivenessI recommend that CMOs mandate the use of both attention strategies and contractually set whatever bounds they like regarding CPM impact Together these strategies will reliably increase sales and branding effect by high double digits sometimes by 2X or more And they can do that with no penalty in terms of media price Or by whatever increase in CPM you authorize The effects are almost always over 20 so willingness to pay premiums of up to 10 will still yield gains of at least 10 for the brandWhy does alignment increase attentiveness There are several quotagenciesquot that cause this effect One is priming subsequent information is more quickly processed in the brain to the degree that it is consistent with previous information A second is mood we all know that an ad can easily break the mood that the program has created But what if the ad conveys the same mood as the program Then the audience flows into the commercial without a sense of dissonance A third and perhaps the strongest is subconscious relevance to one39s motivations and need states If the environment on a subconscious level is about leadership and creativity and then the ad at a subconscious level is also about leadership and creativity there will be attention engagementamp160and motivation see slide below More on the latter subject hereOne will tend to watch programs and read magazines and websites that are relevant to one39s subconscious motivations and need states So finding vehicles which are in line with the motivations and need states subconsciously conveyed by one39s ad will produce alignmentAlignment is one of the subjects which will be heavily researched by a large group of advertisers agencies and media organized by the 4As and Reset Digital in the Universal Inclusion initiative The aim of the initiative is to discover how to include everyone in advertising in the ways they want to be includedAn arms race is the predictable outcome of applying new sciences to advertising The brands who use science first will gain at the expense of those who take longer to adopt scienceMedia as a component of advertising and marketing has tended to be undervalued as a commodity ever since Sam Wyman and others began the practice of creating or splitting off media agencies from fullservice agencies Price was the only consideration and this encouraged Csuites and CMOs to consider media something without an outcomerelevant quality dimension therefore not worthy of their personal attentionMedia quality is a reality and it directly affects brand growth and the bottom line stock prices Csuite bonuses the CMO39s continued personal successamp160and the longevity of the agency relationshipClick 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 MediaVillagecomMyersBizNetamp160

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ARF: The Two Media Strategies for Ad Attention

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Bill Harvey

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