For advertising to succeed, the creative content matters. Of course it does; few would argue that good ads are not more effective than mediocre, or bad, ads. But looking at all the emphasis on media placements in in-market advertising research, you’d think media placement issues are all that count.
The focus on optimizing the media plan is certainly understandable, given the exploding range of options in today’s world. And, since those checks for the big dollars are paid to the media platform providers, the concern as to whether you’re writing the checks to the right outlets is understandable.
But let’s take a look at the creative side of the equation. A recent Nielsen Catalina analysis reported that creative accounted for 49% of the effectiveness of ads in driving short-term sales, while all media factors combined (reach, recency, targeting) accounted for just 38%.
At Communicus, we’ve seen evidence of this in our in-market advertising effectiveness research for years. When it comes to generating advertising awareness, strong ads can breakthrough, communicate and persuade at levels that are at least three times as high as average ads – even given identical media plans. And weak creative – well, you’d be better of putting the money in the bank and waiting to spend it until you’ve come up with a stronger campaign.
If you’re using exposure, or ‘opportunity to see’ based in-market advertising effectiveness methodologies, you may – by virtue of the numbers that you’re focusing on – be falling victim to the current obsession with optimizing where you’re running. Consequently, what you’re running is probably receiving only secondary focus, at best. You get great insights on the placements, but very weak insights into whether the creative is as good as it could be – and how it might be improved for better results.
Optimizing the media plan can ensure that the ads get in front of the right eyeballs. But optimizing the creative ensures that those eyeballs will notice your ad and that the ad will resonate. This is no small thing, since between 75% and 95% of exposures go unnoticed. An unnoticed ad is an ad that has absolutely no chance of impacting those eyeballs that the media plan was so carefully crafted to reach.
Making changes to the media plan is easy. It feels great to be able to collect and use numbers to optimize exposure opportunities. In contrast, understanding – much less optimizing – the creative is harder. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t get more attention. But just because something is challenging, if it can really make a big difference for your brand, don’t you think it’s the right thing to do?
CEO of Communicus Jeri Smith
