Change, Data and the Emotional Connection with Audiences. Insights From the ARF ConsumerxScience Conference

ARF conferences always offer fascinating insights into groundbreaking research, data and analytics. 

At this year’s ConsumerxScience conference, challenges such as fake news and Cambridge Analytica’s use of Facebook data was alluded to in the opening remarks. 

“Science, dispassionate, methodical, skeptical, collegial, evidence-based and theoretically-grounded, is core to our mission,” noted Scott McDonald, President and CEO, ARF. But, he added, “Facts are not the same as values. Values arise from the shared understanding of what we regard as right, ethical, decent or fair.”  In these data-centric times, we need a code of conduct applied towards any use of personal consumer data and the insights that the data reveals. 

Some of the takeaways from the conference include:

Stay Current. The Ad Ecosystem Is Changing in Unexpected Ways

A range of surprising results regarding the advertising business in general – from ad length to the future of agencies – are challenging accepted historical norms. McDonald listed the following:

·         Six second ads can work under some conditions.

·         > Don’t dismiss Outlier behavior. It offers as much valuable insights as the Average because of polarized and hyper-connected populations.

·         > Agencies face competition not just from consultancies, but also from media companies that bundle media research with the media buy (despite worries about grading their own homework).

·        > Ad view time may not be as good a measure of engagement. Research indicates that the relationship is not at all linear – and may not be a good proxy for ROI.

·        > There will be new assessments of the caliber and viability of return-path data and location data, but we are not sure whether those will be big headlines at this time.

Radio is Surprisingly Popular, Especially with Millennials

“Sound is exploding,” stated Michele Mandansky, EVP, Research, Insights and Analytics, iHeartMedia. In a recent study, Nielsen found that Radio has higher reach than TV or Smartphones, especially among 18-34s (92%, 79% and 91%, respectively). To further extend radio’s value to advertisers, iHeartMedia conducted a study on radio creative with Veritonic to predict how a radio spot will perform. The results suggest:

·         Jingles greatly increase the success of the spot and that brands that advertised with a jingle had a higher performance on purchase intent.

·         Clarity and focus on a specific product also increased purchase intent especially when the product was clearly mentioned with its attributes.

·         Conversely, when multiple products were mentioned in a spot, it diminished the ad impact.

·         Always emphasize your products and not your competitors.

·         Disclaimers can work well when they are handled well.

New Data Enables a More Nuanced Look at Creative

There were several companies that presented research on how to best craft creative for the greatest consumer response. Viacom, in conjunction with The Family Room analyzed intra-family dynamics in making consumer purchasing decisions. Theresa Pepe, VP Marketing and Partner Insights, Viacom, noted that teens are developing brand loyalty at a much younger age. “The family dynamic has changed,” she noted. To that end, they developed a set of passion points to map the level of emotional importance for specific brands and categories.

Messaging may tend towards Rational Drivers but it is the Emotional Drivers that create the connection to consumer purchase intent. For example, in the automotive category, Rational Drivers can include size, mileage, storage and cost. But the Emotional Drivers, as George Carey, Founder and CEO, The Family Room, explained, are, “The everyday care and love I have for my child, our time together as a family, protection, love and security.” When Emotional Drivers are included in the messaging, the connection is strengthened and the purchase intent increases.

Brand Mission and Purpose Impacts Consumer Loyalty

Emotional connection that enters into the altruistic is another way for advertisers to connect with their consumers. Sana Carlton, NE Group SVP, Kantar Millward Brown, noted that a brand’s purpose is vital to customer loyalty. “Strong emotional connections that customers have with brands are the irreplaceable, meaningful differentiator of brand choice,” she stated. General product differences like convenience or cost can be replicated. “It is the emotional reaction that stimulates the immediate unconscious desire for choice and the more thoughtful justification of brand choice that is truly unique for a brand and irreplaceable by competitors,” she concluded.

Conclusion

In the ever changing media research ecosystem, the more creative use of data can yield new and actionable insights that move the business forward. The secret to success, according to McDonald, is to “Get out of the comfort zone” by expanding beyond the usual software and multivariate statistics and employing data science techniques. Judging by this year’s ARF ConsumerxScience, the expansion into this new data territory is leading to fruitful insights and successful applications. 

This article first appeared in www.Cablefax.com

 

The (Un)Surprise of Radio

With the proliferation of devices and platforms, one might wonder which one has the greatest impact on viewership. A recent Comparable Metrics Report by Nielsen noted that TV through the glass captures 92% of all of the viewing in the total US. But the real surprise – to some - was the power of radio, at 93% reach. 

AM/FM Radio, with 228 million listeners across the U.S., still has the greatest reach of all individual mediums. That is more than number two ranked Live+DVR/Time Shifted TV (218 million) and number three ranked Smartphone APP+Web (203 million). And Radio has the highest reach among Adults 18-34 at 92% compared to TV’s 79% and Smartphone’s 91%.

One factor driving this growth is the surge in news radio listening across all age groups, especially Adults 18-34. Nielsen reports that Americans listened to more than 11.5 billion hours of news across portable people meter (PPM) markets last year, up from 10.5 billion in 2015.

iHeart Media’s President of Insights, Research and Data Analytics, Radha Subramanyam, is one of those who are un-surprised by Radio’s strength. “Radio remains the #1 mass reach medium in America,” she noted, “Sound is on a growth trajectory while other media are under pressure from fragmentation. So we ask our brand and marketing partners to always ask - What is your Sound Strategy?"

How Nielsen Compares All Categories of Media

When comparing the diverse range of media platforms and offerings, Nielsen must align the methodologies and metrics so as to display an “apples to apples” view of consumption across TV, Radio, TV-connected devices, PCs, Smartphones, and Tablets. But it all boils down to three basic concepts that are the same across all categories of media measurement: how many (which is essentially average weekly reach), how often (number of days per week), and how long (both gross minutes and average minute audience).

Radio’s Surprising Advantage

·         In Audience Distribution: Radio as a whole – from AM/FM to Smartphone, Tablet and PC Audio – is perfectly distributed by age. Sixteen percent of Adults 18-34 and Adults 18-49 and 50+ used Radio, whereas TV in all of its forms skews older. Twenty-nine percent of Adults 18-34 viewed TV compared to 54% of Adults 50+.

·         In Weekly Reach:  More Americans listen to Radio in an average week than any other media (93%) – more than TV (89%), Smartphones (83%), PCs (50%, TV-Connected Devices (44%) and Tablets (37%). And Radio is young with a reach among Adults 18-34 (92%) outpacing all other media including Smartphones (91%).

·         In Diversity: Hispanics are the most avid Radio listeners with over 14 hours per week of AM/FM Radio.

Radio’s Future According to Nielsen

Radio is projected to be resilient, young and a platform that embraces digitization and this may be surprising to some people. Tony Hereau, Vice President of Audience Insights, Nielsen stated, “Despite all the growth in digital media, AM/FM radio is actually growing too.” And the medium remains youthful. “Looking at the 18-34 year olds, we see Radio leading all media at 92% weekly reach.  It was 92% last year as well.  The trend is very consistent,” he noted.  In the digital world, “AM/FM Radio is holding up remarkably well.  Streaming audio is growing but it is more of a replacement for your CD collection rather than your favorite Radio station.” 

Hereau concluded, “For decades, TV has always been thought of as a reach medium while Radio was considered more of a frequency medium.  Over the last few years people have been realizing that Radio is actually a reach medium too.  It is not a new story.  It just became a lot more important when it can be compared against TV and Smartphones.”

Radio is as fresh, youthful and relevant as ever. To many, that is no surprise.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

From Digital to Broadcast Radio. iHeart Media’s Creative Data Initiatives Revealed at the Secret Society

“Data is all about interpretation,” according to Mitch Oscar USIM’s Director, Advanced Television. His efforts to progress the discussion and implementation of data in our industry have been a cornerstone of his Secret Society mission. The June 2016 meeting, held at comScore / Rentrak offices, highlighted those data initiatives that pushed the uses of digital data sets and their insights into traditional media platforms. 

It was at that meeting that Brian Kaminsky, President Programmatic and Data Operations, iHeartMedia, revealed how they took digital data, mined it for insights and applied those insights to their broadcast radio viewers to expand knowledge of that group and use it for branding, marketing and sales purposes.

iHeart Media - Digital Data to Broadcast Radio

Kaminsky explained how his company added a digital DMP and ad serving system and used the insights gathered on digital uses to infer the behaviors of their broadcast radio viewers. “With over a quarter of a billion monthly listeners in the U.S. and over 85 million social followers, iHeartMedia has the largest reach of any radio or television outlet in America. It serves over 150 markets through 858 owned radio stations,” he explained. “By leveraging iHeartRadio user database associated with those digital extensions in combination with data from social platform APIs and other third party vendors, our data science team is able to express iHeartRadio terrestrial broadcast station’s audiences with the same type of data and insights normally associated with digital marketing,” he added.   

Kaminsky’s goal was to get people to use broadcast differently by using deeper level of consumer insights from digital. “We needed a DMP to make output actionable and make the consumer come to life,” he said. The result was the creation of data segmentations, the planning against those segments and then used the data to make radio optimizable on a market by market basis. “We also took data, matched it to social behavior, brought in third party data, normalized it and brought it into the iHeartRadio map. We intend to create a series of private marketplaces for iHeartRadio,” he concluded.

Radha Subramanyam, President of Insights, Research and Data Analytics for iHeartMedia, sees great opportunity with this initiative. She said, "It is incredibly exciting when you can deliver the deep insights and precision of digital media with the scale of broadcast media. Advertisers can optimize campaigns against their targets yet reach enough people to truly have an impact. Targeting at scale is the next big leap forward in the application of data."

Conclusion

For Oscar, the opportunity to showcase a range of data initiatives worked not only for the assembled attendees but also for the industry at large. The four presenters at this Secret Society meeting ranged from iHeartRadio (applying the precision, data and insights of digital and social to broadcast) to Sinclair Broadcasting (using programmatic techniques for the delivery of the primary audience guarantee as well as the equally important secondary target)  to 4Cinsights (providing Coca-Cola with a better understanding of how it could reach its unique target) to Roku (demonstrating the value of timely registration information of its OTT/ cord cutting/ cord-nevers growing subscription population). Future meetings will continue to explore the creative use of data for extraordinary targeting capabilities.

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com

I Heart Research. Q&A Interview with Radha Subramanyam

Radha Subramanyam is, to me, a new breed of researcher easily navigating between the two worlds of “classical” research and the new discipline of data analytics. She is currently President of Insights, Research and Data Analytics for iHeartMedia. 

After receiving her doctorate, Radha taught for a couple of years before beginning her media career. “I always wanted to work in media,” she explained, “but I wasn’t exactly sure where. What I did know was that I wanted to be part of the action.” And she has been in the center of the action ever since.

In this interview, Radha talks about her career in research, the differences and co-mingling of classical and new data research, metrics, research principles, mentorship and work / life balance. 

Charlene Weisler: Can you please tell me how you got into research as a career?  

Radha Subramanyam: It was logical for me, with a doctorate, to start in research but I actually started on an internal consulting team at NBCU working on all types of projects in several departments. When I finished my rotation I wound up in research, which was a good fit for someone highly analytical and driven by curiosity.  I was able to work in all areas of research – programming, branding, marketing, ratings, ad sales, digital – the entire spectrum. I moved to Viacom and after more than a decade in pure TV, I moved into pure play digital at Yahoo. Next, I had the opportunity to be part of the Nielsen / McKinsey joint venture, which included a deep dive into social media.  I have been at iHeartMedia for four years now and have been building a next generation insights function.  We are transitioning research into the Big Data universe.

Charlene Weisler: How do you marry classic research with new data analytics?

Radha Subramanyam: I think of data as a way to tell the consumer’s story. It’s a way to illuminate and understand the consumer journey through various touchpoints. Both classic and new datasets have robustness, statistical meaning and thinking grounded in years of practical research. Adding digital data  to broadcast data has more granular capabilities and might offer a more interesting story. At iHeartMedia, we have tons of digital data and classical research databases that we merge together. We have announced investments in companies like Unified Social and Jelli to enable us to think of broadcast media in a digital way and to activate broadcast in the programmatic universe. The blending of classical thinking with the expansion of big data is where the action is.

Charlene Weisler: What metrics are most important to you?

Radha Subramanyam: We look at a whole range of metrics depending on what problem we are trying to solve. At iHeartMedia, we are strong in both digital and broadcast performance and can now talk about the listener across devices with a high degree of granularity – what interests her through the day, what she buys and what drove those decisions.  We are in the results business and harness all ROI capabilities. 

Charlene Weisler: How are you able to bring all the behavior back to ROI?

Radha Subramanyam: iHeartMedia has over 850 radio stations, several TV shows, 20,000 live events, concerts and festivals each year and we reach over a quarter of a billion people in an average month. This is massive scale and we are in a growth mode. We can measure ROI in many ways – Nielsen Catalina tied to Nielsen audio, for example, can literally show how we can move product off the shelves. We also have multiple attribution models to ascertain the impact of marketing.

Charlene Weisler: How does research need to be done today vs years ago?

Radha Subramanyam: We’ve had multiple datasets for decades. All of those datasets – from digital to ratings to surveys – were siloed. Now, data is a core asset and we try to stitch it all together.  And we bring in outside datasets to enhance the internal dataset. We have partnerships to build something unique and different. Today we are data creators, not just data analysts.  We have become product people. For many this is a scary scenario but for me it is exciting and full of opportunity. If you are comfortable with uncertainty, if you are adventurous and if you are open to rethinking things every few weeks, analytics is for you.

Charlene Weisler: What is your research process?

Radha Subramanyam: I always focus on the business problem and then look at the dataset and toolkit to solve the problem at hand. We used to count on the facts, now I am more comfortable using data as a starting point and then taking a leap of faith.

Charlene Weisler: How do we get the next generation interested in a career in research?

Radha Subramanyam: We currently have significant interest in research and analytics from students. But how you train them is important. You need more investment in grooming and training. Hire for smarts and not for skills. Hire those who are nimble in their thinking and truly curious.

Charlene Weisler: Tell me your thoughts on mentoring.

Radha Subramanyam: It is very valuable and important for both the mentor and mentee. It helps me keep in touch with the next generation. I invest a lot of energy mentoring young women who seem to lose confidence in the STEM fields. There is no one place to ascribe blame though.  We need larger cultural shifts to young women really engaged in STEM fields. 

Charlene Weisler: How do you attain work / life balance?

Radha Subramanyam: That is a misnomer. I don’t know anyone who is truly balanced. There are times when parts of your work command a lot of you and vice versa. For me it is about being flexible in both my personal and professional life.

Charlene Weisler: What is your philosophy regarding career success in research?

Radha Subramanyam: Stop thinking of media through the classic channels approach – it is not just TV, it is not just radio and it is not just digital. Think of the whole consumer journey and you will be much better off. We are holding on to things we will need to shed. You need to be willing to be flexible and you will have fun.

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com