Interactive Advertising Bureau Defines Success

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is running an educational campaign about behavioral advertising.  

The campaign consists of banner ads.

Since launching in December, the campaign has delivered 600 million impressions.  The click-through rate is .06%.

The vice president of public policy of the IAB has declared the campaign a success.

With a click-through rate of .06%.

Perhaps I’m mistaken, but if you’re a marketing director that has just paid for 600 million impressions, would you be happy with a .06% click-through rate?

Would you still be employed with a .06% click-through rate?

The argument everyone uses is that nobody clicks on banner ads.  Which raises two questions.  The first being, why did the IAB choose a format that is known to be ineffective in which to get their message out?

And two, shouldn't the fact that nobody clicks on banner ads be the behavior that we should be most concerned about?

San Francisco To Oakland - $69

I know that times are tough, but a one-way ticket on Delta from San Francisco to Oakland for $69 is a bit ridiculous.

VivaKi Says Pick Your Poison, Ooops, I Mean Interruption

The big news out of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Leadership Conference yesterday was that consumers would prefer to select the commercials that they are forced to watch online rather than just being forced to watch what has little or no relevance to them.

I know, it seems to be common sense, but nonetheless, Pbulicis’ VivaKi conducted a very expensive, 16-month study to tell us just that.

What they revealed yesterday was just how much more effective giving viewers a say actually was. According to the executive who oversaw the project, unaided awareness rose 386% over conventional pre-roll ads.

386%!

Specifically, according to this executive, when people select the commercials they’re forced to sit-through, they have an unaided awareness of 68% vs. only 14% for a standard pre-roll exposure.

My question is, why in heaven’s name does this seem to be so surprising to these people?

We all know how pre-roll works. A commercial starts, we have no control over it, 15 or 30 seconds later, the commercial ends and we can start to pay attention to what we came to see in the first place.

In this new model, a viewer needs to click on a brand and/or commercial in order to start the process. In other words, they get to pick their poison by physically clicking on “Tide,” or “Ford”, or “Nike.”

Maybe it’s just me, but wouldn’t one expect that clicking on something to choose it would increase unaided awareness? In fact, it’s not really unaided awareness, is it? The only way the commercial runs is by being aided by the viewer.

What’s surprising is that only 68% of viewers can still remember a brand after clicking on that brand. Shouldn’t that be somewhat higher? Shouldn't that be a lot higher?

And, what’s even more surprising is the little piece of data that no one seems to be talking about. Unaided awareness of standard pre-roll ads, you know the type that media agencies will tell you are the most effective, is only 14%.

14%!

Now, that’s a number that I think most media agencies should be explaining. Then again, I'm sure that VivaKi has a very expensive 16-month study you can sign up for.

“Why Are We So Afraid To Disrupt The User Experience? We’re In Advertising.”

The above quote was from David Moore, 24/7 Real Media Founder and IAB board of directors chairman. He was speaking at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting on Sunday night.

Let me get this straight. The chairman of the board of directors of the IAB basically says that since we’re in advertising, part of our job description is to disrupt the user experience.

In other words, the definition of advertising needs to include the word “disruption.”

I’ve heard many definitions of advertising – to inform, to entertain, to engage – being just a few. But to disrupt?

Mr. Moore, you need to remember that the viewer is in control of the digital space. When you disrupt their experience, they leave. When the advertiser was in control, advertisers could disrupt. The viewer had no choice.

Today, it’s different. Today, the viewer is the boss.

Curiously, in his statement above, Mr. Moore refers to viewers as “users” – Why are we so afraid to disrupt the user experience?

Perhaps changing the word “user” to “boss,” would change his way of thinking.

Why are we so afraid to disrupt the boss’s experience?

I’m sure you already know the answer to that.

Why Ideas Trump Impressions

Let’s say you have 1 million impressions.

The second by second data comes back saying that on average, viewers watched only 10 seconds of your 30-second spot.

Now let’s say you have only half as many impressions (500,000). But the second by second data comes back saying that viewers, on average, watched all thirty seconds of your spot.

In the first example, you have 10 million seconds of time spent with the brand.

In the second example, you have 15 million seconds of time spent with the brand.

If time spent with your brand is important to you, then a better idea defeats a larger user base every time.

Where are you spending your money?

The Reason People Skip Commercials Is The Same Reason People Watch Them

The reason people skip commercials and the reason people watch them is the same.

Time optimization.

The reason I fast-forward through a commercial on TV with my DVR is time optimization. I can get back to my program much quicker by fast-forwarding through the commercials.

Ironically, the reason I might choose to watch a commercial is also time optimization. If I’m in the market for a new car and a commercial comes on regarding one of the cars I’m considering, I’ll watch it in the hopes that it will help shorten my decision making process.

Are most commercials written with this in mind? Of course not. The objective of most commercials is still to break through the clutter. A way of thinking that I believe is quickly becoming outdated.

After all, the clutter issue is being eliminated with DVRs. Viewers just zap the entire commercial pod. Ten seconds later, four commercials have bit the dust and the viewer is back to their program.

At some point and time the industry will realize that there are now two types of video advertising – intrusive and non-intrusive.

And while the number one of job of intrusive advertising will continue to be to break through the clutter, the number one job of non-intrusive advertising will be time optimization.

Viewers will subconsciously be asking themselves as they watch if they are optimizing their time by watching this commercial. If the answer is yes, they’ll continue to watch, regardless of length. It could be thirty seconds. Or, three minutes.

But as long as they’re in control to leave when they want, they’ll exercise that control and stay as long as they’re involved with the message.

As we’ve said in the past, people don’t mind investing time in a commercial as long as they can control the time invested.

On the digital platform, control equals time. The more you give, the more you have the chance to get.

You Can Address An Ad To Viewers, But You Can’t Make Them Watch

Media agencies can only do so much. After that, it becomes the responsibility of the creative.

Joe Marchese wrote a nice piece regarding this and the subject of engagement yesterday – All Advertising is Based on Engagement.

And while I usually find myself agreeing with most everything Joe says, I disagree with one point in his most recent post.

All advertising is based on engagement, wrote Joe. Couldn’t agree more. But then Joe went on to say that most media make money from advertising based on how good they are at transferring people’s engagement with content into engagement with advertising.

This is where Joe and I differ. I don’t believe that it is the job of the media, or the job of media agencies, to transfer a viewer’s engagement from say, programming content to commercial content.

That is the job of the commercial itself.

If people start watching the commercial and then stop five seconds in, who’s fault is this? The media agency's? The media’s? Or the creative itself?

In talking to media agencies, they have told me that once a viewer starts watching, their accountability is over. Their job, as they see it, is to bring the proverbial horse to water. If the horse decides to partake or not depends on many things. One being the quality of the water.

Water quality is not part of a media agency's job description.

I couldn’t agree more.

Joe says that according to Princeton’s WordNet, the verb engage is defined as “to consume all of one’s attention or time.” Certainly, that is the goal of any good advertising, especially a commercial. After all, why would a marketer create a 30-second spot if they only wanted the first five seconds watched?

Does this mean that engagement can’t be the new measurement metric? Not at all. Rather, what it means is that engagement is the responsibility of two different groups. The media agency for bringing people to the commercial. And, the creative agency for involving people in the commercial.

Engagement is a sum game. Equal parts exposure to and involvement in.

Only by separating the two responsibilities, and then holding each group accountable for what they do, and not for what they don’t, will engagement have a chance of joining reach and frequency as one of the metrics that matter.

A Letter To Neal Grossman, Newly Appointed Chief Compensation Officer For TBWA

First off, Neal, congratulations on your new appointment. Not only is it a new position for you, it is a new position for the industry. Which means, and I don't mean to add any extra pressure on you here, Neal, but you’ll be setting precedents with everything you do.

It’s quite a title, by the way — Chief Compensation Officer. Of course, we all knew it was only a matter of time before the industry came up with an “anticurement” officer to go head to head with marketers’ increasing utilization of procurement officers.

As I understand it, your job is to oversee fee discussions with your agency’s current and prospective clients, proving to them that what you’re charging for services and/or production is truly justified.

I know, people are probably joking with you that your job will be to somehow maintain the triple macchiato latte on set, but I think you and I both know that it’s a bit more serious than that, don’t we Neal.

I mean, what you truly have to do is somehow prove that what your agency is charging is worth what the advertiser is paying.

In other words, what you have to come up with, Neal, is a fair way for your agency to be held financially accountable.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that you work for a company like TBWA; a company known for its creative chops.

Which means you can tie accountability into creative acumen. How so? Let’s say you propose a sixty-second commercial to one of your clients. As you sit across from their procurement officer, who is slicing and dicing the production budget like a Benihana chef, what if you offered the following suggestion?

That any profit to the production company, as well as agency fees, would be contingent on how long the commercial actually involved the viewers.

In other words, instead of cutting money out of the production up front, have a portion of the amount of money paid to the production company and agency be contingent on results. The result in this case being the amount of viewer time spent with the commercial.

The arguement that you're going to get, Neal, goes something like this. Why time spent? Does time spent lead to sales? And while your answer is that common sense seems to indicate that the more time spent with a commercial, the greater the chance of convincing someone to buy the product, that's not really the point here, Neal, is it?

The point is that the client is paying for sixty seconds to be produced. Which means that the client is actually paying for sixty seconds to be watched. If only ten seconds are watched, then the client is getting a poor ROI for production dollars spent. If all sixty seconds are watched, then the client’s ROI on production dollars spent is exceptional.

As you know, Neal, clients pay extremely well for “exceptional.”

In other words, what I'm suggesting is don't quibble with the marketer’s procurement officer over direct costs. Quibble over profit.

All this model asks TBWA to do is earn their profit before putting it in the bank.

Will clients play this way?

When I sat down with a large CPG client and explained the way it worked, they agreed to pull back their procurement people. They liked the fact that the digital platform allows them to use return path (second-by-second) data to help them underwrite the cost of commercial production.

But what they gravitated to even more, Neal, was the fact that what this truly does is it allows the viewer to become the procurement officer.

And that’s the reason why you probably won’t initiate this process, isn’t it? After all, if you eliminate the need for procurement officers, you also eliminate the need for Chief Compensation Officers.

And, the way I look at it, the last cost you probably want to elimninate is yours.

Best of luck to you, Neal.

Things I’m Tired Of

I’m tired of Super Bowl halftime shows consisting of old bands that shouldn’t be playing anymore.

I’m tired of all the hype around commercials at the Super Bowl and then being let down year after year.

I’m tired of consumers writing lousy commercials for brands like Doritos.

I’m tired of marketers approving lousy commercials for brands like, well, name any brand that ran a spot in the game.

I’m tired of the voting that takes place after the game to pick the best commercial when there wasn’t one that aired that was truly worth voting for.

I’m tired of having people at Super Bowl parties say, “You’re in the business aren’t you? So tell me, why would someone pay $3 million for that?!”

How Deep Is The Pool?

VivaKi has a new initiative called Pool.

One would imagine that they called it that because it was a way for brilliant minds to pool their thoughts and come up with breakthroughs in regards to advertising on the digital platform.

After 16 months of testing, the first so-called breakthrough was announced: Consumers like to select the advertising they have to sit through online before watching the content they actually want to watch.

In other words, consumers would prefer to be given a choice of commercials rather than just having commercials run.

According to one VivaKi executives who oversees the initiative, “The Pool demonstrates the power of industry collaboration to identify more efficient solutions and more effective ways to interact with people.”

If this is the result of the power of industry collaboration in action, the industry is in serious trouble.

Let’s not forget that VivaKi charges publishers hefty sums to participate in the project.

Which probably better identifies the real reason why the initiative is called Pool.

It’s a way for VivaKi to pool large amounts of income without actually delivering anything of value.

The Commercial Intrusion Factor: 16%

According to the recent TubeMogul study, 16% of online viewers click away from pre-roll video ads.

This means they leave during the commercial, abandoning the content that they actually wanted to see.

To some, this number is manageable. Hell, what’s 16%? No doubt some thought this number would be even higher.

High or low, what this number seems to represent is what I call the “Intrusion Factor.” Intrude on what someone has come to see and 16% of viewers will abandon ship, period.

This 16% has little to do with a commmercial’s relevancy. Which means that it has little to do with behavioral targeting. Or, anything else for that matter.

All it truly measures is intrusion.

As we mentioned awhile back, it’s not so much commercials per se that people are trying to avoid as it is interruptions or intrusions that are caused by commercials.

In other words, it’s not the content that’s the problem as much as it is the placement. Behavioral targeting tries to tie content to audience. Perhaps the behavior that they should be most concerned with is placement.

The rub lies in the fact that the job of the media agency is to sell impressions, not involvement. Whether people hang around to actually watch the commercial is of little concern to the media agency.

If media agencies recommend commercials that don’t intrude, the number of actual click—ins, or impressions, will then be measurable. Obviously, this number is much lower. Which makes the client unhappy. So media agencies keep recommending pre-roll.

What marketers need to consider is that if a viewer does click-in, it means that there is some relevance, at least in the eyes of the viewer. How long they stay involved in the commercial depends on how well the commercial is crafted.

The option for marketers is to consider the amount of time they capture from each viewer, rather than the amount of impressions they buy from the media agency. Impressions have little to do with actual viewer time spent.

Logic seems to indicate that the more time spent with a brand, the greater inclined the viewer might be to buy the product.

What marketers know now is how many impressions a $5 million buy will get them. What they don’t know is how much time spent with the brand that same $5 million bought them.

Now that they also know that 16% of viewers are opting out, maybe they'll become a little more curious in regards to the latter.