Putting the Viewer First: A Look at FreeWheel's Viewer Experience Lab

Launched in 2023 this initiative is designed to help address as Chris Glover FreeWheel39s Vice President of Marketing explained quotan incredibly complicated industry 39Every day at FreeWheel we are focused on every minute aspects of advertising technology but when we go home and watch TV we get annoyed just like every other consumerquot Some of the biggest annoyances he noted include ad repetition latency and quotunnatural creative breaksquot that interfere with the content narrative Such annoyances diminish not only the enjoyment of the programming but also the engagement of the advertisingThe goal through all of this research effort is to help guide advertisers and content providers as to the most effective and engaging ad delivery methods quotWe39re never going to be prescriptive to a publisher saying 39Hey you should do it exactly like this39 It39s more insights to help them as they look at their own ad strategiesquot he explained and added quotEvery publisher has their own approach with different takes on things like creative diversity and pod lengths But any light that we can shine to provide best practices about how they39re ultimately delivering advertising to consumers and planning and selling their advertising we think is very valuablequotThe Viewer Experience Lab has been designed to improve three major areas of advertising amp8211 Quality of ads Quantity of ads and Relevancy of ads For each of these important pillars of research FreeWheel has designed whitepapers the last of which Relevancy is due out later in 2024Although it is called a Viewer Experience Lab it is not a lab per se Rather it is more of a research approach quotWe39ve partnered MediaScience who is an expert in advertising and media research innovation and technology including neuromarketing audience researchquot Glover explained This includes viewing sessions where they can control the variables such as pod duration latency and repetition both in home and at a mini lab facility Testing includes quotNeuro metrics like heart rate eye tracking facial coding to truly understand how viewers are experiencing how viewers are feeling when they view advertisementsquot he stated From there insights are gleaned such as viewer sentiment on ads and branding KPIs for exampleThe research studies and results so far have led to both micro and macro insights according to GloverOn a micro level with ad pods for example quotwe found that when ad pods were built with ads that are all the same lengths either 15s or 30s viewers found they felt the ad breaks were shorterquot he shared quotSo if they saw a pod with six 30s ads for a total of three minutes or they saw one with a 30 second ad and then a 15 second ad then a 30and then another 15s the inconsistent pod would have felt longer to themquot The finding that pod consistency across ad formats leads to better viewer experience can be immediately applied in the field and should deliver better resultsOn a macro level Glover has found that while advertising in general quotgets a bad rapquot the reality is39 more nuanced quotAdvertising has traditionally been thought of an annoyance and no one likes advertising breaks but we found there39s actually a lot of positive sentiment for advertising particularly when the ads are relevant to the consumerquotThe ultimate takeaway upends a media shibboleth quotThe ads themselves don39t hurt program enjoyment It39s the bad ad experience Our recent report quotImproving the Quality of Ad Experiencesquot which we just released last week found there was no change to program liking among viewers when there were ads present versus when there are no ads present and that alone is a very interesting data pointquot Glover concludedSo it39s not the ads that are the problem it is actually the experience that gets in the way of ad enjoyment quotIt39s the ad repetition the latency the blank slate that viewers sometimes see Those are the real problems of the industry and that39s what we39re shining a light onquot he notedFor Glover quotAdvertisers have a lot of choices and they can buy advertising in a lot of different environments I would advise them to not lose sight of putting themselves in the viewers39 shoes At the end of the day it is the viewer that matters most We advise advertisers to work with trusted partners who are putting this issue firstquotClick 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 MediaVillageorgMyersBizNet

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Putting the Viewer First: A Look at FreeWheel's Viewer Experience Lab

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Charlene Weisler

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