The effectiveness of advertising is diminishing. A fragmenting audience, increasing advertising overload and the consumer's growing possibilities of avoiding commercials threaten the relevance of 'above the line' advertising. 'Traditional' measures of advertising effectiveness are not always successful at capturing the effect of 'in-programme sponsoring'. This can be attributed to the fact that this form of advertising evokes mainly low-involvement processing. By using psychological tests to measure implicit brand associations, this presentation shows how new ways to measure the immeasurable have been developed.
In January 2005 the Dutch Advertisers Association (BVA) presented the results of an observational study on viewing behaviour during commercial breaks. Results from filming 100 households watching TV showed only 20% of commercial airtime is watched attentively, while 20% walk out of the room, 20% is zapped away and during the rest people stop looking at the screen and start to talk, phone or read. Similar results were obtained in another, smaller scale observational study by Mark Ritson of the London Business School, where 'the percentage of advertising watched varied from 23% to 55%' (Ritson, 2003). TV is no longer the centre of attention in the household. For effective advertising we must look for those rare moments when people pay attention. Based on an observational study by the University of Leeds, Sheila Byfield concluded 'the level of viewer involvement in programmes has an important and direct influence on whether the break will be viewed - at all' (Byfield, 2000). This paper shows how viewing duration or 'net fraction' from the people meter panel is used as a proxy for attention and how this approach was validated using a large scale study on audience attention and program appreciation.
One concern of research users is the possible 'professionalisation' of respondents. Respondents may participate in more than one access panel because they like filling out questionnaires, collecting rewards, or keeping abreast of the surveys of the (research) competition. In the process they may become very experienced and knowledgeable. This paper addresses whether, when analysing survey data from an Internet access panel, we should check for such variables as source of recruitment, policies regarding rewards, duration of panel membership, panel response rate and number of surveys undertaken.
This paper focuses on how radio reach builds up. When do our listeners start to recognise radio spots? After how many days of airing, after how many times of hearing? The results are based on a telephone survey among 3,889 radio listeners and show us the day-by-day reach of campaigns. For each respondent, the number of times he or she heard the radio spot before the survey was calculated and this was related to recognition of the campaign. In this way it is possible to calculate the 'optimal' frequency level of radio campaigns.
The paper concentrates on a new method for the measurement of specific issue readership. By means of an electronic version of the Through the Book method with various issues of some twenty magazines the specific issue reach and the cumulating reach has been investigated in the Dutch market. The paper treats methodological issues: how the new method can be used in print audience research and how it can be combined with the measurement of the effects of print and television.
This paper describes the development by Initiative Media of Matrix, a new tool for optimizing multi-media campaigns. Based on a survey held in 12 countries amongst over 24,000 respondents, the main purpose of which was to establish the overlap in the use of different media. Reach and frequency for any combination of media can be calculated by combining these figures with regular media surveys. As media contacts may differ in value for delivering desired communication effects, different weighting methods are proposed. The first is based on the expert opinion of a large number of media specialists; the second is database oriented; and the third is based on econometric modelling of the multi-media mix. However, it appears most available tracking studies do not provide the data needed for proper modelling. Therefore an alternative layout is proposed for tracking studies.
Twin Commercials are rapidly becoming popular in the Netherlands as a way of coping with clutter. A theoretical framework justifying the use of Twin Commercials hardly exists. What is really needed is research into the effect of repetition within very short time intervals. On the break level, zapping behaviour partly destroys the Twin Commercial effect. It is an illusion to think that viewers see both parts of the Twin Commercial in the same break. This means that both parts of a Twin Commercial must have a leg to stand on. At campaign level, contact frequencies are almost doubled. In order to prevent wear-out effects, some variation is recommended. The adding of new information in the second part of the commercial could be a way of achieving this. The hypotheses we tested could not be confirmed. Of course, we tested only one set of commercials. It could be that the main film used, as a result of its length or creative content, generated so much impact that the extra 5 seconds did not matter so much. Both The Media Partnership and the STER are willing to repeat the survey with other commercials. But for now the effectiveness of Twin Commercials seems at best limited. Of course, there can be creative reasons for using Twin Commercials anyway. Use Twin Commercials when there is a creative necessity, and an available creative implementation for them Use combinations with a relatively short main film (30 or less), otherwise the added value is bound to be small Ask for exclusivity as a Twin Commercial within the commercial break For a Twin Commercial to make your brand or product stand out among the clutter, you really need an outstanding Twin Commercial