INTRODUCTION
In an environment of intense advertising clutter and privacy concerns, consumers increasingly are avoiding advertisements they find annoying and untrustworthy. The popularity of advertisement blockers, particularly among younger Internet users, is just one indicator of this trend. Subscription digital-video services, such as Netflix, have boosted the availability of advertising-free content. In television, content owners are reducing advertising loads and advertisement length, with 6-second commercials becoming increasingly prevalent. The ultimate goal is to provide consumers with a lessened exposure to advertisements and, as a result, a better, more engaging experience.
In this shrinking world of advertising, how should advertisers measure that experience and its impact on their bottom line? Two years ago in the Journal of Advertising Research, I addressed the challenges of identifying metrics that mattered most in digital advertising (Fulgoni, 2016). Since then, much has changed in the way marketers potentially can reach and engage their target consumer segments, and, accordingly, marketers need radically new measurement systems to keep pace.
A WORLD OF MANY PLATFORMS
Digital technology has driven the adoption of over-the-top (OTT) viewing of television and other video content by high-speed Internet connection rather than cable or satellite provider. This has led to consumption of video on desktop computers and mobile devices in addition to television sets. For consumers, “cutting the cord” to pay-television subscription services and instead subscribing to lower-cost OTT services saves money. Consumers also potentially can reduce their exposure to advertisements by subscribing to advertisement-free services.
Although there has been some debate about the magnitude of the decline in pay-television subscriptions, it is happening at an uncomfortable rate for cable and telecommunications companies (Ramachandran, 2018). One could argue that Netflix—with no advertising on its platform—is the original driver of this change in consumer behavior. Today, Netflix has the largest number of subscribers to advertisement-free content, followed by Amazon and Hulu (eMarketer, 2018).
Challenged by Netflix's success, television content owners such as CBS, ESPN, and NBC are seeking to monetize their own direct-to-consumer OTT offerings while trying not to accelerate the decline in pay-television subscriptions and the associated lucrative affiliate fees they receive. These content owners increasingly also must compete with the likes of Facebook and Google (Poggi, 2018), which are focused intensely on the direct-to-consumer video model. This is a delicate balance, to say the least.
The changes in consumers' video-viewing behavior have put great pressure on third-party audience-measurement services. Metrics should be able to track viewing at the granular level of show by platform by geography, while integrating live and time-delayed viewing. There is also an attention-measurement challenge: Few viewers are giving the television set their undivided attention. eMarketer (2017) reported that 178 million U.S. adults regularly used a second-screen device while watching television in 2017. Marketers need ways to measure and monitor the degree to which this distraction—and dilution of attention—is “devaluing” a television advertisement campaign's audience.
THE SHRINKING WORLD OF ADVERTISING
The 6-Second Advertisement
It took the efforts of Leonard Lavin, founder of Alberto Culver, to persuade the television networks in 1972 to run 30-second advertisements instead of the full-minute length that previously had been the only acceptable standard. That change was followed by the introduction of 15-second advertisements in the mid-1980s. Studies reported that recall scores for 15-second advertisements were as high as 75 percent of scores for a 30-second commercial, at only half the cost. According to Kantar Media, 2016 marked the first time on network television that there were more 15-second advertisements (47 percent) than 30-second advertisements (44 percent; Adgate, 2017).
Now, six is the new 30. With younger consumers increasingly viewing short-form video on mobile devices, advertisement lengths are getting shorter. Five-second advertisements are not uncommon; Pepsi, for example, experimented with five-second television commercials plugging its emoji-designed bottles (Schultz, 2016). Six seconds seems to be the favored short format, however, among brands that benefit from it. In the first quarter of 2018, Extreme Reach's Video Advertising Benchmark Report noted that advertisers' use of 6-second advertisements grew by 300 percent compared with a year earlier and that the format accounted for 2.8 percent of all video advertisements (Weprin, 2018).
So how are the “sixes” faring? It is not surprising that consumer acceptance has been positive. After all, watching a 15-second nonskippable advertisement preceding a 45-second video clip is a frustrating experience. By contrast, recent research shows that consumers get a much better user experience with 6-second advertisements, and advertisers benefit by maximizing awareness and reach.
In early 2018, the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video, in partnership with RealEyes, an emotional-intelligence firm, conducted a comprehensive study of the impact of advertisement length on advertisement experience and business results (Rothwell, 2018). Among the more important findings were the following:
Six-second advertisements had a more positive impact when used to reinforce a message already delivered by a longer advertisement. (Purchase intent was highest when a 6-second advertisement aired in the last spot.)
When used exclusively, 15-second advertisements were seen as twice as effective as 6-second and 30-second advertisements.
In today's cross-platform world, 6-second advertisements are running on the major digital sites, including YouTube and Facebook. YouTube, in fact, deprecated the use of 30-second nonskippable advertisements in early 2018.
The 6-second advertisement also appears to adapt well to television. T-Mobile used the format during Fox's coverage of the 2017 World Series and reported that the 6-second advertisements boosted viewer-engagement metrics, such as brand recall, likability, and message recall, all while providing an improved consumer experience (Crupi, 2017).
When this essay was entering production in June, the Advertising Research Foundation and TVision Insights released a study they conducted from November 1, 2017, through April 30, 2018, examining television advertisements that were run for a group of advertisers who used short-form advertisements (Mandese, 2018a). The research found that 6-second advertisements on broadcast and network television captured more attention per second than standard commercial units. This was true across all age groups.
The study also found that the success of short form on linear television depended on how the advertisements were used. Variables that affected this included pod position and structure, clutter, connection to long-form storylines, premium content, and day part (i.e., the broadcast day is divided into several parts, e.g., prime time).The opportunity exists to conduct more research in the future to understand better the optimal way to use a combination of short-form and longer-form advertisements, especially across platforms.
A World of Fewer Advertisements
At a time when there are more opportunities to advertise than ever before, Rishad Tobaccowala, chief growth officer at Publicis Groupe, earlier this year shocked the advertising industry by predicting that the ability of advertising to actually reach consumers will decline 20 percent to 30 percent over the next five years (Mandese, 2018b). Tobaccowala cited three factors that would drive such a decline in the number of delivered advertisement impressions:
Online and on mobile, consumers have found ways to avoid advertising.
There are more and more advertising-free or reduced-advertising en vir on ments.
Because advertisements simply are not a good experience for many people, networks and platforms are trying to reduce the advertising load.
The accuracy of Rishad's prediction is debatable, so it is helpful to analyze the relevance of the three drivers of his prediction. It is true that growth in the use of advertisement blockers and time-delayed viewing of recorded video content (which allows viewers to fast-forward through advertisements) are both undisputed behaviors that drive fewer advertising impressions.
Although there are more advertisement-free environments, however, advertisement-supported content continues to dominate, even as television continues to evolve.. Nielsen found that 88 percent of the time that adults above the age of 18 spent on media platforms in 2017 was with advertising-supported content. This usage was relatively flat over the past decade, off only slightly from 2012, when the share was 89 percent (Weisler, 2018). This means that despite the proliferation of devices—which drove an increase in overall time spent with media—engagement with advertisement-supported content has kept pace.
The third possible driver of reduced advertisement impressions should be a source of great concern for the advertising industry—and much of it relates to consumers' trust in advertising. In a September 2017 PwC survey, just 6 percent of U.S. Internet users said they trusted media and entertainment companies. Dead last was trust for marketing and advertising firms, at only 3 percent (Ramsey, 2018). In response, a number of television-network groups, including Fox and Viacom, are looking to reduce advertising clutter in 2018. They are joining Turner and Viacom, which had initiated efforts to reduce commercial clutter in previous seasons (Friedman, 2018).
At the May upfronts—where television executives present programming plans for the fall season—Fox was particularly upbeat about the change. Bruce Lefkowitz, executive vice president of advertising sales at Fox Networks Group, told MediaVillage.com, “With Netflix and other streaming services, viewers are increasingly becoming accustomed to a non-ad-supported environment. The industry knows change is needed. We need a stronger consumer experience that leads to a better environment for advertisers' messages” (Fields, 2018). He noted that studies point to higher levels of engagement and recall, among other enhanced metrics, when messaging is presented in a less-cluttered environment.
What premium are advertisers willing to pay for less clutter? Not much, it appears. An April 2017 survey found that marketing and media agency executives would be willing to spend, on average, a premium of just 7 percent to advertise on the networks that have reduced their advertising clutter (Friedman, 2018). More than one-third (38 percent) of the 304 executives interviewed said they would not be willing to pay any premium.
CONCLUSION
In today's cross-platform world, marketers need new measurement systems that can address the way advertising is responding to what the consumer wants: more platforms, less clutter, and fewer interruptions. Some consumers have resorted to the use of advertisement blockers or time-delayed advertisement skipping—both of which have cut down on delivered advertisement impressions. In response, many content owners are reducing their advertising loads and increasingly are running 6-second advertisements in an effort to provide consumers with a more enjoyable advertisement-engagement experience.
At the same time, mobile devices and social media have brought an unprecedented level of potential distraction to the viewing of both television and video advertisements. This creates an urgent need to measure consumers' attention to and engagement with advertisements in this world of altered viewing behaviors.
New metrics are needed now for measuring unduplicated viewing and delivered advertisement frequency at the granular level of show by platform by geography by day part. These metrics, moreover, must integrate live and time-delayed viewing—while capturing the degree of attention to advertisements of varying length..
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gian M. Fulgoni is the former chairman and chief executive officer of comScore, Inc., which he cofounded in 1999. He retired in 2017. His nearly 40-year career at the c-level of corporate management, prior to comScore, included being president and chief executive officer of Information Resources, Inc. Fulgoni over the years has overseen the development of many innovative technological methods of measuring consumer behavior and advertising effectiveness. He is a regular contributor to the Journal of Advertising Research.
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