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TWO SECONDS OF AD EXPOSURE INSUFFICIENT FOR BRAND GROWTH

By Bill Harvey March 27, 2024 In Terms of ROI Archives

The attention measurement sector led by Karen Nelson-Field at Amplified
Intelligence has established that the two main digital media segments that
together represent nearly $350 billion in annual global ad spend  – social and
short-form video, both of whose usage is mostly on mobile devices – have
built-in platform effects which constrain the lion’s share of ad exposures to
less than two seconds of attentive viewing.



YouTube’s 54321Skip platform can go as high as 4.5 seconds (with a small percent
of higher outliers) but there the ad attention is shared with the Skip button.

Evidence is beginning to accumulate in neuroscience that in 1-2 or even 4.5
seconds of attentive viewing, it is physically impossible to cause the kinds of
brain reactions known to be very highly predictive of sales effects.

At the Advertising Research Foundation’s AUDIENCExSCIENCE 2024 Conference
(packed with world-class new findings), it was my honor to co-present the flash
results of the FOX/Wharton Neuroscience Initiative/Bill Harvey Consulting 2024
Neuro study, whose full results will be released in May. Two Wharton leaders in
the field, Elizabeth Johnson (known as Zab) and Michael Platt, and FOX EVP
Audrey Steele and I presented the first 3% of the sample of a ten-cell study
using a battery of neuro, biometric, and verbal measures of eight ads each
representing a different major vertical. The ten cells are media types,
including TV set and smartphone types such as social media and YouTube, seven
types of television including streaming, and ads shown without any contexts as a
quasi-control group baseline. The eight verticals together represent more than
three quarters of all national advertising revenues.

Michael and Zab presented earlier work with major advertisers in which many
different brain measures were analyzed to determine which brain metrics best
predict sales. Three specific brain metrics stood out as being highly predictive
of sales effects:

 1. Synchrony, which accounts for about 90% of sales effect, is when the sample
    population shows the same patterns at exactly the same times.
 2. Approach, the ratio of left:right frontal cortex Alpha wave activity. In
    this context also known as Brand Attraction.
 3. Memory Encoding.

All of these measures need more than a few seconds of attention to bloom, as
shown by Michael’s charts showing the second-by-second buildup of these brain
reactions.

Brand attraction/joy takes 15 seconds to peak
Non-premium digital's 1-2 seconds of attention can reinforce but rarely change
behavior



This finally explains to me why the study TRA did with Comcast and Dunnhumby
about ten years ago found that TV was more than twice as strong as digital at
bringing in new brand customers. A few seconds of reminder advertising can have
sales effect on existing customers, but it is not enough time to persuade a
non-brand-buyer to give the brand a try. It’s because of the nature of these
brain effects and the time they require. One more mystery solved.



This also explains to me why fewer than one in five brands studied grew market
share over the past ten years, according to the FOX Bill Harvey Consulting MMM
analysis of all major brands in verticals representing about half of all
national ad spend. It was the over-shift to newer, lower cost platforms whose
accessible metrics and younger skew suggested unproven long-term effectiveness.

Non-premium digital with its addressability, measurability, and interactivity
(and walled garden ability to report results selectively) has made sales for
sure – especially for direct response which enables landing pages that provide
adequate seconds of attention to move the brain needle. But the current
imbalance cutting deep into the TV muscle has constrained those sales to past
customers, not to brand penetration growth.

Ironic considering that the number one cry by brands is for brand growth.

As TV catches up in addressability, measurability, and interactivity, the dollar
pendulum will swing back, and wise brands will not wait for that before
switching back to more TV weight in order to gain the jump on competitors.

With only 3% of the sample completed, only one new findings slide was presented
by the FOX Wharton BHC team at ARF AxS 2024, combining all the different types
of linear TV and streaming, and comparing that with YouTube:

Attraction and memory are sustained for ads shown
in premium channels compared to YouTube



What this shows is that TV sustains its sales-causing brain effects far longer
than YouTube. In May of 2024 it will be fascinating to see how this compares for
the different types of TV measured: broadcast prime, cable, sports, news,
streaming, and for social media, TV set vs. mobile device, eight different
verticals, and including the Synchrony metric, which requires more sample size.

The other thing that jumped out to me from this slide is how low the performance
of advertising is without any media content around it. We have always wondered
how much of advertising’s value comes from the media environment. The answer is
that the media contribution is enormous. It may even be higher than the 35% of
incremental sales estimated by TRA. RecentlyNCS estimated it at 39% for TV but
far lower at 26% for digital. These latest big data singlesource and neuro
findings are coming together to help industry understanding of WHY the flow of
dollars away from TV is capping brand growth.

Posted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership self-publishing platform.

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The opinions expressed here are the author's views and do not necessarily
represent the views of MediaVillage.org/MyersBizNet.


BILL HARVEY

Bill Harvey, who won an Emmy® Award in 2022 for his invention of set top box
data, has spent over 35 years leading the way in media research with pioneer
thinking in New Media, set top box data, optimizers, measurement standards,
privacy standards, the A…


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