Not All Contextual Strategies are Created Equal

The reason why context effects are such a hot topic nowadays is that privacy measures are degrading individual person targeting capabilities the industry had become quite dependent upon In some countries in Europe only 30 of the IDs are still operating The US might not ever go that far but still it is a pretty clear warning sign that marketers everywhere must learn to use both contexts and IDs together to reach the audiences they want to reachSo the thing that is propelling renewed interest in contexts is not the effect they have on the ad39s performance but their ability to attract specific audiences The wise marketer will use context strategies for both purposesThe ARF webinar was moderated by ARF39s Horst Stipp who in his illustrious career at NBC had been deep into studying the effects on contexts on ad performance most notably with regard to the Olympics but also across a broader canvas In the preparation for the webinar the panelists and Horst had many interesting email strings and calls In one of those strings Horst pointed out that most studies of context effects in the past 50 years have shown small effects eg 1015Horst also acknowledged the larger context effects which third parties have found by using the RMT approach of which I39m the inventor He has explained this on a number of occasions based on the fact that RMT analyzes the alignment between an ad and a context based on many variables 265 whereas most context studies use at most a handful of variables Horst also commented that quotRMT research confirms the evidence that emotional alignment between context and ad is one of the strongest drivers of context effects The data also suggest that alignment between ad creativemessage brand image and consumer values is importantquotI would add that the content codes being used by RMT were the first to be empirically derived using machine learning and set top box data rather than subjectively selected and that39s also part of why they deliver higher ROI and branding results than other context strategiesAlignment and native attention are the two ways in which contexts can help ads deliver better outcomes RMT is a species of the alignment approach content coding ads and programs The Super Bowl is an example of native attention meaning that it is a program whose viewers pay above average attention to it and all ads are lifted by that program effectI mentioned to Horst that quotnot all content coding schemes are created equalquot and he readily agreed We both cited the use of Nielsen program types as one species of context effect being weak We also agreed on endemic matching advertising cars in car related websites as being another obvious context strategy The endemic approach has yielded better ad effect results than program typesHorst broadened the scope of the meaning of context effects as he explained this slide he presentedInterestingly among the many speakers at the event collectively we all touched upon every ring in this bullseyeThis ARF webinar was focused on ads appearing near positive vs negative content This too has been an increasingly hot topic since around 2016 The nastification of the news has pushed some advertisers away while drawing viewers in increasing numbersUniversity of Oregon39s Jessica Canfield presented data which showed that partisanship has become by far the most divisive variable as compared with race and other differences in our society One of the studies she shared showed that ads appearing next to a false story about Trump winning the 2020 election were far more effective in terms of brand purchase intent and recommendation among conservatives than among liberalsLumen39s Mike Follett and Oracle39s Josh Baines copresented a study which scientifically proved that quotif it bleeds it leadsquot meaning that there is a bias people pay more attention to negative stories than to positive stories The human race is biased in favor of negativism It would appear that this is its own pandemicJosh also showed how different are the word clouds used by Millennials vs the rest of the population when making social media statements about altruistic ads The Millennials are obviously far more skeptical and demand proof that it39s not just talk This was supported by Ipsos findings presented later by Manuel and by Horst39s closing remarks recommending an article by Peter Fields on making Brand Purpose ads that workARF39s Jay Mattlin recapped Twitter findings which found no statistically significant differences between ads next to quotforbidden wordsquot vs overall norms in any of a number of outcome metricsDartmouth University39s Kimberly Clark presented data showing that charitable contributions are driven more by positive charity spots vs negative onesI summarized a study I presented in the prior webinar in the series which shows that altruistic ads tend to appeal to all 15 motivations discovered within the 265 behaviorpredictive psychological variables in the RMT taxonomy I pointed out that this does not guarantee that altruistic ads will always be effective the effectiveness of advertising and programming of any kind does not depend upon the content itself but on the way it is put together the creative executionManuel GarciaGarcia Global Lead of Neuroscience at Ipsos summarized the changes in attitudes and behavior of consumers in relation to brands39 social values particularly in the younger generation He explained the need to move from cultural awareness to cultural fluency and how brands can go beyond just representation to achieve the authenticity that consumers demandTo make your Purposealtruistic ads more effectiveMake sure to report the good you are doing in the world facts that speak for themselves and are their own proof that your brand is not just talking about caring but actually doing something about itTie your social good works to your wellestablished brand image For example one of the first COVID ads was one by Budweiser announcing the donation they have made to convert sports stadia to testing and vaccination centers The link between Bud and sports is automatic in one39s mind so the entire piece hung together well and might have even positively impacted some MillennialsClick 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

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Not All Contextual Strategies are Created Equal

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