Featured Story The ultimate guide to doing more with less in 2023: Advertising edition As the threat of recession looms and ad spend growth slows, marketers may be tempted to cut back on advertising budgets - but this could be a costly mistake. In this article, Lumen's Managing Director Mike Follett outlines strategies for making advertising budgets work harder, including optimizing for attention, embracing contextual targeting, and being bold with creative, all of which can help brands weather
the economic storm and bounce back stronger.
With recessions still a risk across the western world and growth in US ad spend likely to decrease from 8% in 2022 to 3.7% in 2023, it is
tempting for marketers to jump on the recessionary bandwagon and slash budgets in order to weather the economic storm. But in fact, this is probably the worst thing brands can do right now. In fact, research has shown that marketers who retain the same budget during a recession - or even increase it - tend
to bounce back the strongest. Therefore, now is the time to hold strong with advertising. But there’s more to it than that. 1. Do more with less Of course it’s not as black-and-white as sticking to your guns and waiting for audiences to engage. Putting ads out there is only half the battle. Part of the problem with online advertising is that until now, a large
proportion of impressions have gone unnoticed, thanks to poor placements, as well as bot traffic stealing valuable ad spend. And even when an ad is viewable, there’s still a chance it won’t engage the user - depending on a whole host of factors such as time of day, position on screen, creative format, or contextual relevance. According to our own data, around 35% of all ‘viewable’
programmatic display ads are in fact ignored. An ad is only really viable if it is a) viewable by human eyeballs, and b) set up to garner true attention from those eyeballs. If marketers can achieve more viewable impressions - and also more engagement from those impressions - they may even be able to reduce their ad spend over time. 2. Move beyond viewability to embrace true attention We can see from our data that when users do look at an ad, it tends to perform really well. By using opt-in eye-tracking data - at scale and across myriad channels such as TV, desktop, tablet and
mobile - we can measure a whole range of attention metrics. Of course, Attention Time is crucial because it measures how long a user is physically eyeballing the ad. But we can also measure other user activities happening concurrently, such as clicks, cursor position, touch rate, scroll rate, scroll depth, audio on/off, audio volume and so on. Therefore, understanding in which ad environments consumers are most likely to be susceptible to a brand’s messaging is key. 3. Bring contextual targeting to the fore In a cluttered digital world, context is king. Our recent research demonstrates that news sites tend to garner the most ad engagement (attentive seconds per thousands impressions), followed by fitness sites, and home and garden. At the other end of the scale, shopping and education sites do not tend to perform as well. By combining ‘attentive seconds per
thousand impressions’ with ‘cost per thousand impressions’ to buy that particular inventory, marketers can calculate the true cost of attention. They can then look for bargains such as underpriced inventory that actually reaches a larger share of the market than expected. We’ve seen above how different categories impact attention performance, but there are other factors which will affect the
outcome of a brand’s placements. For instance, attention data shows that time spent consuming ‘slow media’ - content that users don’t scroll past, but engage with - correlates with them spending more time engaging with the surrounding ads as well. Another factor is the publication itself. Opting for premium news brand sites, which tend to offer more original content, also results in
slower scroll speeds, and therefore higher ad engagement. 4. Be bold with creative There’s no better time than a recession to get brave with ad creatives. And if marketers succeed in making their
current budgets work harder, there ought to be enough in the pot to splash out on bigger, better ad formats. Opting for larger ad units will generally garner more attention. Remember, ads should be attention-grabbing, as long as they don’t leave the user scrambling frantically for the ‘x’ button in the corner. Second, choose a high-impact ad format. A recent study found that Adnami’s Topscroll ad unit is viewed for seven times longer than a standard display unit on desktop; and more than twice the average display unit on mobile. Overall, high-impact formats drive up to 72 times more attention than standard display units. What’s more, attention is directly linked to prompted
and unprompted brand recall, proving that the format of an ad can make a significant difference to performance. In summary, marketers should combine contextual relevance, premium sites, slow media, large creatives and high-impact units for the ultimate levels of attention. 5. Use attention data to fuel campaign optimisation
By combining all the different types of deterministic data mentioned above with predictive modelling, brands can begin to estimate the likelihood of users looking at ads across a variety of placements. This suddenly gives them a powerful way of optimising campaigns for brand awareness and engagement - all in real
time. Whereas traditional campaign optimization has been largely based on historical data, attention platforms are paving the way for more accurate, in-the-moment testing and optimization that can have a large impact on performance. Economic uncertainty and a potential marginal decline in ad spend shouldn’t put brands off making the right investments. By mastering contextual relevance, building the right ad creative and leveraging attention data, they can do more with less in 2023.
Mike Follett is one of the founders of Lumen, the leading attention technology company. Mike started his career in
advertising, working for DDB in London, New York and Mumbai, before returning home to start Lumen in 2013. |
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LinkedIn has announced a new feature called "Collaborative Articles" which uses AI-generated prompts to create relevant content, then matches it with "topic experts" who can add their input. LinkedIn's editorial team will develop "conversation starters" with the help of AI, and then use the LinkedIn Skills Graph to match
each article with relevant users who can contribute their experience, lessons, anecdotes, and more. The insights contributed by the selected industry experts will be visible to LinkedIn users worldwide, and users can engage with their comments, and even push their comments to the top of the collaborative article, giving them more exposure. The feature also rewards community members who contribute often with a "Community Top Voice" badge, which creates an incentive to comment on more of
these articles. Collaborative Articles could be a low effort way to potentially engage a huge number of users and create more exposure for brands or businesses, as well as a goldmine for audience insights and industry pain points for content marketers. Google is testing a potential response to Canada's Online News Act, which would require
digital giants such as Google and Meta to compensate Canadian media companies for republishing their content. The company said it is temporarily blocking some Canadian users from accessing news content, affecting under 4% of its Canadian users. The test, which will run for around five weeks, includes all types of news content created by Canadian broadcasters and newspapers. Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez argued that the bill will "enhance fairness" in the digital news
marketplace, but Google has expressed concerns that it could result in "cheap, low-quality, clickbait content." Red Ventures, the owner of CNET, has announced that it is carrying out a reorganization of its team, which will result in layoffs, but the number of staff impacted is unknown. The Verge has estimated that the layoffs will
affect 10% of the company's workforce. The company denies that the layoffs are related to its testing of artificial intelligence to generate articles. Last November, the company also carried out another round of layoffs. Recently, CNET launched a test using an internally designed AI engine to help editors create basic explainers around financial services topics, which was audited after a factual error was reported. Utah lawmakers passed a package of bills that would ban social media companies from allowing minors under 18 to have accounts without parental permission and from serving any ads to minors. The Social Media Regulation Act would require social media companies to verify all current and prospective users' ages and allow parents to access all content and interactions of their underage children's accounts. The bill would
apply to social media companies with more than five million worldwide users. Tech industry organization NetChoice is urging Utah Governor Spencer Cox to veto both bills, saying they are not only unconstitutional but would harm hundreds of Utah businesses and put at risk the privacy and security of every resident in the state. The Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) has fined the online counseling app BetterHelp $7.8m for allegedly sharing sensitive mental health information with third-party companies for advertising purposes, despite promising to keep users' data confidential. The FTC alleges that BetterHelp shared data with platforms including Facebook, Snapchat, Pinterest and Criteo, allowing the companies to use the information for their own research and development. The app has previously come under scrutiny over its data
practices, and the FTC's fine comes a month after it fined GoodRx $1.5m for allegedly sharing users' health data. The settlement with BetterHelp still requires judicial approval. Affiliate marketing has become a major component of fashion and beauty brands’ businesses because it provides a potentially less costly alternative with more ROI to pure
influencer marketing. During the pandemic, more than 50% of affiliate marketing programs increased their revenue. The global affiliate marketing industry is worth over $17 billion and is a top revenue source for 31% of publishers as of February. Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing where brands pay affiliates, meaning independent individuals or companies, a commission for promoting their products or services and driving sales or leads to their websites. According
to Julia Casella, who oversees global communications for Hourglass Cosmetics, affiliate marketing can supercharge your influencer marketing. While it’s not an exact science, it is another piece to the ever-evolving consumer-journey puzzle. Jennifer Bett Communications partner Melissa Duren Conner agreed that affiliate marketing may not work if brands don’t have the proper resources to manage the program. Maria Costa, director of brand and integrated marketing at M.M.LaFleur, said her company has
spent the last few years operating a more traditional influencer strategy, including paid partnerships and gifting. As a result, it now has a deep understanding of the influencers who are not only amazing content creators but also strong revenue drivers. TiVo's recent fourth-quarter 2022 report indicates that 28.8% of respondents plan
to drop their pay TV service in the next six months, up from 24.2% in the fourth quarter of 2021. Additionally, the survey noted a rising "churn" among individual streaming platforms, with 26.6% dropping a subscription service, up from 18.2% the year before. Netflix saw the highest rate of churn, with over 27% of all respondents who recently canceled a service dropping the subscription service, followed by Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Paramount+, Disney+, and HBO Max. The
biggest reason for dropping a streamer was rising prices, followed by not using the service enough. The survey was conducted among 4,493 US and Canadian citizens aged 18 years and older. According to Sprout Social's 2023 Content Benchmark Report, the professional sports industry generates the highest number of social media posts per day,
averaging 26, and drives the highest number of inbound engagements, with 639 in a 24-hour period. The media and entertainment category is the second most active with 21 posts and 334 engagements, followed by the automotive industry with 16 posts and 70 engagements. The report also reveals that consumers prefer 1-2 posts per day from a brand, and the most engaging types of in-feed social content are short-form video, images, and live video. Hershey's International Women's Day campaign in Canada, featuring a transgender woman among five other women making positive changes in their communities, has sparked a boycott campaign by some who oppose trans rights. The Her for She programme, which promotes gender equality and clean drinking water in Indigenous communities, includes Fae Johnstone, a self-described queer, trans
and feminist activist, on its custom candy wrappers. Hershey's is also running limited-edition chocolate bars in the US that emphasise the "she" in its name with purple coloring and are decorated with adjectives such as "fearless" and "hardworking". Brands frequently face boycott threats over social issues, but Hershey's concerns were that the controversy would overshadow the message of the campaign. |
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