Today, the Advertising Research Foundation announced that the paper “Effectiveness and Efficiency of TV’s Brand-Building Power: A Historical Review — Why the Persuasion Rating Point (PRP) Is a More Accurate Metric than the GRP” has been voted Best Practitioner Paper 2021 by the JAR Editorial Board.  Along with co-authors Frank Findley of MASB, David Stewart of Loyola Marymount University and Kelly Johnson of Disney, we at MSW Research were very honored to have our work recognized with this prestigious award.

The paper was published in the December 2020 issue of the Journal of Advertising Research.  It addresses the questions of whether television advertising is as effective as in the past and if so, how it compares with other media-platform alternatives.

The major conclusions of the study include the following:

• On a single, quality exposure basis the television ad format is as effective now as it was in the 1980s (based on copy-testing for 30-second television ads collected within the United States for typical categories with brands advertising throughout the years 1980 to 2014 using a consistent methodology, MSW Research’s CCPersuasion^TM measure).

• The rate of delivery of an ad’s selling power per GRP has slowed, requiring approximately 25% more GRPs to deliver the same brand-building power in market as it did in the 1980s.  This implies that television-channel proliferation, time-shifting technology, and simultaneous digital-media consumption (multi-screen behavior) are having an impact on the advertising viewing experience.

• This decline is mitigated, however, by a 45 percent increase in the number of households in the United States over the same time period.  Each rating point now represents many more households. So even though fewer households are now effectively reached by a given spending level on a percentage basis, this is not true on an absolute number of households basis.

• Despite a potential increase in distracted viewing, television advertising still maintains an effective frequency profile that is comparable to other media channels including digital.  All examined media types – including television – can be effective within the range of average frequencies typically deployed for them.

Every media platform has its own strengths and challenges. Although the interruptive nature of television advertising may make it more susceptible to divided attention with other media, it also provides television with one of the most immersive visual and audio experiences.

Television remains an effective media platform, and television advertising should continue to be used to maintain and grow market share. By focusing attention on the development stage, brands can improve advertisement quality to such a degree as to more than compensate for the decline in the rate of ad selling power delivery per gross rating point.

Trafficking gross rating points behind advertisements on the basis of their persuasive strength allows for the diminishing returns dictated by wearout to be managed while maximizing sales power delivered in market.  This means actively managing both quantity and quality of the advertising media plan, which can be achieved through focusing on Persuasion Rating Points (GRPs weighted by a measure of persuasion), rather than GRPs alone.

Contact us for a full reprint of the article.

Smart cookie-blocking technology led by Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) and Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) now block third-party cookies by default, and even Google’s Chrome will soon get controls that let consumers block cookies. Browser-level blocking, third-party ad-blocking apps, and new regulations like GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) are quickly relegating the old cookie to the internet dustbin.

Most digital marketing plans are built upon the use of personalized targeting enabled by cookies.  To enable these, companies will have to disclose every specific, possible use of their information by marketers.  Marketers are either going to obtain this opt-in on a narrowly defined use basis, or, form very specific consumer panels, or not pursue obtaining it at all to spare the risk involved.  One lawsuit in California for misuse could bankrupt a company.

While there are various digital techniques that do not require cookies that will be used, the consensus from those on the front lines is:

• ​Privacy first in all creative development, delivery and measurement
• ​Relevance without being personal (and creepy)
• ​Engaging targets (there are messages that you won’t have to micro-target to be relevant)
• ​Ad environments will become more important
• ​Effective reach will be a critical measure
• ​Good measurement, probabilistic models (rather than individual cookies) complemented by strong planning. (‘Everything old is new again’ stated by more than one panelist).
• ​Testing creative is a must
• ​Set a high bar for creative ads
• ​Content is where the focus will be

MSW provides an alternative to a post-cookie world…

• ​Test content before going to market
• ​Effective creative enables you to be relevant without targeting each individual
• ​Targeting research will be more critical than ever to successful creative
• ​MSW has unique measurement and analytic tools to develop your segments, targets and positioning
  • No advertising campaign can be created without a strong foundation in these three areas
  • Our probabilistic models are predictive and validated
  • Our accompanying models are build to include effective reach
  • Our models recognize various ad environments and platforms

​Contact us today and let’s talk about the implications for your brand in a Post-Cookie world.

More than 100 years ago, John Wannamaker was famously quoted as saying: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”

Only half?

Fast forward 100 years, and many marketers still don’t know how much of their advertising is wasted. And with the myriad new methods for advertising (e.g., digital, social media, reviews, etc.), we’d be lucky if we are only wasting half our money. John Wannamaker would be horrified!

That is why it is so critically important for marketers to use validated, sales predictive metrics when evaluating advertising. Validation means that the metric predicts real, in-market behavior: brand preference, sales, share lift, revenue, and loyalty. Advertisers who do not use market proven validated metrics risk wasting significant resources both in advertising expenditure and in the health of their brand.

Validation Obsession

MSW is obsessed with validation and has been for decades. As far back as the 1970’s, MSW began testing their fundamental metrics for predictability. Since then, MSW’s validation efforts have been continuous and rigorous, including cross-client analysis, client sponsored independent studies, publishing in academic journals, and independent industry trade group audits. Here are a few examples regarding MSW’s CCPersuasion metric (which measures a pre-to-post change in brand preference as the result of advertising):

• L’Oreal: BBDO’s conducted an independent analysis for three L’Oreal brands: Preference, Excellence, and Revitalift. Their analysis concluded that MSW metrics strongly validated with advertising in-market performance. And as determined by L’Oreal a one-point increase in CCPersuasion yielded a 0.6% lift in retail sales. The analysis also determined that as CCPersuasion increased versus the norm, so did Annualized Customer Value (ACV) with a top 10% television ad resulting in an increase of ACV of $42.5 million.
• Celestial Seasonings: Celestial Seasonings evaluated five selling propositions, moving forward with the strongest which measured CCPersuasion significantly above Fair Share. The brand went to air with an ad that outstripped even that superior selling proposition. “. . . Our advertising didn’t just steal share from competitors; it grew the herbal tea category. While tonnage for most other hot beverages was declining during this time period, herbal tea sales were up, with increases as high as 12 percent in one of the spot television markets,” said VP Marketing Mike Mondello.
• StarKist Tuna in a Pouch: Our research suggested increased emphasis on the “fresher and better taste” product benefit could improve effectiveness. In fact, the finished execution scored 2.5-times the benchmark. “The results from the initial advertising quarter yielded an ROI of 76 percent, an enormous improvement over the break-even ROI we had expected for the quarter using a traditional approach,” reported Barry Shepard, StarKist.
• Walmart: Walmart compared the incremental sales generated (from MSW’s Marketing Mix Modeling) by a specific television ad to the CCPersuasion points delivered (the CCPersuasion score combined with media weight) for that ad. The strong relationship (r = 0.82) confirms CCPersuasion measure is a valid predicter of the sales effectiveness for advertising for Walmart.

CC Persuasion Audit Summary

A combination of industry, agency, and academic leaders created the Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB) to ensure“ the efficient and effective functioning of a marketing-driven business because decisions about the allocation of resources rely heavily on credible, valid, transparent, and understandable information.” MASB then established their Marketing Metric Audit Protocol (MMAP) to validate whether marketing and advertising research metrics accurately measure and predict the market behavior they purport to predict.

MASB conducted an 18-month study across 12 product categories and 120 brands, comparing MSW’s CCPersuasion metric to Unit Share. Not only did MASB confirm the strong relationship between CCPersusion and Unit Share (r = 0.88), but it also found that accounting for price and distribution improved the relationship to an almost unheard of 0.94. The MMAP audit concluded that “the CCPersuasion metric is able to quantify the likelihood and magnitude of an ad’s impact on future sales volume and market share.” MASB also concluded CCPreference has been “proven to reflect market share with a high degree of accuracy across a spectrum of diverse categories.”

Summary

As Gayle Fuguitt, former President and CEO of The Advertising Research Foundation summarized, “It is the most complex time in the history of advertising, yet the C-suite questions are simple:

• “Do my marketing dollars drive growth and sales?”
• “Where do I spend the next marketing dollars?”

MASB’s work, focused on the accurate and comparable measurement of marketing efforts, is advancing the industry to respond to these C-suite needs and to drive much needed growth.”

However, MSW is not resting on their laurels. Their validation obsession drives them to continually evaluate and test their metrics to ensure in-market predictability.

Does your advertising drive business results? Do your advertising metrics accurately predict success? Not sure? Contact us today