Putting the Viewer First - A Look at Freewheel’s Viewer Experience Lab

The secret to compelling advertising is an ongoing project but, thanks to advanced research techniques, it is possible to more fully understand which ad experiences best engage viewers.

 FreeWheel has developed such a technique using MediaScience, a company that mines insights to improve the quality of ad experiences through FreeWheel’s Viewer Experience Lab.

Launched in 2023, this initiative is designed to help address, as Chris Glover, FreeWheel’s Vice President of Marketing explained, “an incredibly complicated industry. We're focused on very minute aspects of advertising technology but when we go home and watch TV we get annoyed, just like every other consumer.” Some of the biggest annoyances, he noted, include ad repetition, latency and, “unnatural creative breaks” that interfere with the content narrative. Such annoyances diminish not only the enjoyment of the programming but also the engagement of the advertising.

Although it is called a Viewer Experience Lab, it is not a lab per se. Rather it is more of a research approach. “We've partnered MediaScience which is an expert in neuro-marketing audience research and technology,” he explained. This includes viewing sessions where they can control the variables such as pod duration, latency and repetition both in home and at a mini lab facility. Testing includes, “Neuro metrics like heart rate, eye tracking, facial coding to truly understand how viewers are experiencing, how viewers are feeling when they view advertisements,” he stated. From there, insights are gleaned such as viewer sentiment on ads and branding KPIs, for example.

The results so far have led to both micro and macro insights according to Glover. On a micro level, with ad pods, for example, “we found that when ad pods were built with ads all of the same lengths, either 15s or 30s, viewers found the ad breaks shorter,” he shared. “So if they saw a pod with four 30s for a total of two minutes or they saw one with a 30 then a 15 and then another 15, the inconsistent pod would have felt longer to them.”  The finding that pod consistency across ad formats leads to better viewer experience can be immediately applied in the field and should deliver better results.

On macro level, Glover has found that while advertising in general, “gets a bad rap,” it's not totally true. “Advertising has traditionally been thought of an annoyance and no one likes advertising breaks but we found there's actually a lot of positive sentiment for advertising particularly when the ads are relevant to the consumer.”

The ultimate takeaway upends a media shibboleth. “The ads themselves don't hurt program enjoyment. It's the bad ad experience. Our study found there was no change to program liking among viewers when there were ads present versus when there are no ads present and that alone is a very interesting data point,” Glover concluded.

So it’s not the ads that are the problem, it is actually the experience that gets in the way of ad enjoyment. “It's the ad repetition, the latency, the blank slate that viewers sometimes see. Those are the real problems of the industry and that's what we're shining a light on,” he noted.

Ultimately, the Viewer Lab has been designed to improve three major areas of advertising – Quality of ads, Quantity of ads and Relevancy of ads. For each of these important pillars of research, FreeWheel has designed whitepapers, the last of which, Relevancy, is due out soon.

The goal through all of this research effort is to help guide advertisers and content providers as to the most effective and engaging ad delivery methods. “We're never going to be prescriptive to a publisher, saying, ‘Hey, you should do it exactly like this.’ It's more insights to help them as they look at their own ad strategies,” he explained and added, “What are some things they can do, such as creative diversity, remain really, really important. But any light that we can shine to provide best practices about how they're ultimately delivering advertising to consumers and planning and selling their advertising, we think is very valuable.”

For Glover, “Advertisers have a lot of choices and they can buy advertising in a lot of different environments. I would advise them to not lose sight of putting themselves in the viewers’ shoes. We advise advertisers to work with trusted partners who are putting this issue first.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Artwork by Charlene Weisler

 

Does Data and Creative Mix? Yes, According to Craig Elimeliah of VMLY&R

In a media world awash with data, one might be forgiven for thinking there is less space for creativity. But that would be a wrong assumption. 

In fact, according to Craig Elimeliah, Executive Director Experience, VMLY&R agency, “Data is part of our creative palate. It is fuel that helps drive the creative process. Data helps to unearth deeper human insights that allow us to create more meaningful and valuable connections with our audiences.”

As someone with both a creative and data-driven background, I was interested in learning more:

Charlene Weisler: Do you think media executives are any less creative today - relying more on computing and data for decisions?

Craig Elimeliah: Not at all! As a matter of fact, we need to be even more creative than ever. Computing and data have only widened the canvas we work on. We are now forced to communicate in a highly fragmented world where people have unfortunately sequestered themselves inside of very hard to penetrate bubbles. Computing and data are the fuel and the rocket we need to deliver those messages to the right people with speed and precision. 

Weisler: How do you foster creativity in the various life stages?

Elimeliah: You have to expose yourself to as much culture as possible. Become completely multifarious, a cultural Zelig of sorts. When you can make yourself a vessel that absorbs everything happening around you – looking past the surface to really tap into the human motivation behind our actions – only then can you begin applying the same sort of logic and nuance in how you engage people creatively. Data helps us navigate this massive landscape strategically and efficiently. 

Weisler: How can data best be leveraged in crafting creativity?

Elimeliah: Data is often looked at in a very scientific and academic way – this is a symptom of data having been traditionally owned by those domains. But I believe we now live in a world where data is less binary. Creative people are using data so much more fluidly and naturally; they are using data in creative ways that enable them to mine more jewels from it, and use it as a medium to engage and communicate. Data is sexier than most people give it credit for being.

Weisler: What are the new technologies which can stimulate the creativity of copywriters and art directors?

Elimeliah: A.I. is no longer this inaccessible thing. It’s built into everything. Phone cameras are a really interesting creative tool. There is so much intelligence baked into the tech, and a single picture and the responses it elicits can unlock volumes of data and creative inspiration when you push the tools to really perform. Stimulation is all around us. I think technology is also our biggest barrier for creativity because people have become ensnared inside of insulated pockets and tend to only see things that reinforce their own views. Technology needs to be both harnessed and broken in order to truly gain creative power from it. 

Weisler: What role does neuroscience play in this?

Elimeliah: I believe neuroscience was invented because humans need a scientific explication for everything. In this case we want to be able to explain creativity. There are no tools to truly measure our capacity to generate ideas that are unique and original, ideas that break conventions and change the world. Creativity is the ability to tap into the entirety of your experiences, all at once, and to be able to identify and pull out feelings and emotions that are closely associated with the task at hand as a starting off point. An idea. Not sure science can contain that.

Weisler: How does one identify the targets’ need states leads to “true meaning pivot points” where creativity can best be applied? What are the need states?

Elimeliah: Love this question!  We often fall into the trap of trying to force a journey or a path onto our “target” (I don’t like calling people targets).  We try and look at how people really behave and then try to find ways to be helpful in moments that give us the best opportunity to do so. People are inundated with so many things at once and our job is to be empathic with how we engage them. No one is going to “pivot” (hate that word too), they will however recognize when a brand is being helpful and adding value to their lives and will respond in kind to that gesture if it is made to the right person, in the right place and at the right time. Disruption and intrusion are obnoxious and rude unless a person has given explicit consent that that is how they want to be engaged. It’s a very delicate process.  There is no silver bullet. 

Weisler: Talk more about Dynamic Creative – based on microsecond by microsecond responses. How can it be  monitored, measured and exploited?

Elimeliah: Dynamic Creative is a message that is distributed at an atomic level using data and targeting. I’m not a huge fan of banners and the like, but I do appreciate their abilities to get messages out there. What really excites me is the idea of sequential storytelling. The ability to leverage dynamic creative, along with data and targeting, to tell a story to many different audiences, using frequency and creative and unique formats that work in combination over many channels. Personalization really helps to increase engagement.

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

The Unconscious Path to Purchasing Decisions

The mind works in mysterious ways, unless you are tracking the path to purchase. According to Daniel Codella, Senior Content Marketing Manager, Wrike, there are 7 psychological triggers that marketers can use to ascertain how consumers think and feel. 

Triggers are common psychological motivators, cognitive biases and behavior patterns. Knowing them can help influence and understand consumer interest, attention and actions. 

This is vital because, as he noted, “Ninety-five percent of purchasing-making decisions take place in the subconscious mind.” Product designers are especially adept at exploiting these triggers. “They are able to design products and apps that we have an emotional bond to,” Codella explained. But you don’t have to be a designer to apply these triggers. “People can be moved to action, enthusiastic persuaded to try new things just based on writing alone,” he added.

Here are the 7 Triggers:

     1.       Faith in Aesthetics. “The way that things look, matters a lot,” he stated. More than 50% of our brain is used to process visual information. Only 8% is used for touch and 3% for hearing. People make immediate judgments based on how things appear. Visual appeal can increase perceived credibility, authority, trust and value.

     2.       Request Justification. People have a natural tendency to comply with requests if they are given a reason why. “When people understand why you are doing certain things, they are more likely to follow through and do it,” he explained. When a ‘because’ is included, compliance increased from 60% to 95% in a study about cutting into a line. For marketers, be clear in what you will do and add something visual about your deliverable.

     3.       Social Proof and the Bandwagon Effect. Because we are social creatures, the actions of others serve for how we think we should act. In unfamiliar situations, we look to others to validate decisions, even if we don’t like these other people. “There is power in numbers,” Codella noted because feeling included in a group is a strong motivator. Interestingly, there are cases where aligning with smaller groups offers a sense of exclusivity. Examples are Facebook showing likes with specific friends, social-proofing our posts. This includes building momentum. Getting traction for messages, just as an airplane need momentum to lift off, is important for marketers. Codella suggests adding comments to your articles to get discussions started.

     4.       Serial Positioning. “The order in which we encounter information is powerful,” he asserts. People can most easily recall information from the beginning or end of a list. The beginning is the Primacy effect and the end is the Recency effect. So Codella recommended that marketers should, “Tell me. Show me. Tell me what you showed me.”

     5.       Availability Cascade. The more a piece of information is repeated, the more likely we are to believe it. Repeating claims such as The Best and The Most consistently will eventually get consumers to believe it. Repetition in social media is important because the average lifespan of posts range from 18 minutes on Twitter to 7.4 hours on YouTube. “People don’t pay as much attention to our marketing as we think they do,” he noted.

     6.       Curiosity.  “This is one of the most powerful emotions,” according to Codella. There are no limits as to what people will do to satisfy their curiosity. Having partial information drives us to fill in the information gaps. But balance is important. Too little information doesn’t drive enough interest and too much makes seeking more information unnecessary. Tweaking blog titles so as to pique curiosity will drive traffic.

     7.       Labeling.  “We are a lot more like each other than we like to admit. We don’t mind being included in a group if we like the attributes of the group.” Codella cited the example of a study where people were randomly labeled “politically active” even though they were no more active than the other groups. However this group was 15% more likely to vote. Codella’s advice is to label customers by the qualities you’d like them to have and they will change their behavior to reflect those characteristics. 

     This article first appeared in Cynopsis.

Nielsen and YuMe Bridge the World of Neuroscience and Content

The media industry is making greater use of the precepts of neuroscience in creating compelling content for viewers and the ARF has been advocating neuroscience in media research for several years. Now, a recent partnership of Nielsen Consumer Neuroscience and YuMe, a firm that looks at cross platform content, is using neuroscience to more efficiently ascertain the power of content across devices. 

I sat down with Devin Fallon, Director, Media Insights and Analytics at YuMe and Dr. Brendan Murray, VP of Client Services and Neuroscience at Nielsen Consumer Neuroscience, at the recent ARF conference and asked them the following questions:

Charlene Weisler: What are some of the key takeaways of your collaboration?

Brendan Murray: One of the key takeaways we found was that, from a non-conscious perspective, emerging technologies like virtual reality and 360 video really have the opportunity to engage consumers and really get them interested and involved in the content that is being presented. We do find though that there is this balance or interplay that content creators, brands and advertisers really need to keep in mind between giving people the ability to freely explore their environment, to have that freedom that we know to be engaging but also balancing that with the flow of the story that is trying to be communicated. How do you let people explore their environment but also still track whatever the story is or whatever the messaging is that you are trying to get across? And what are some of the ways that content creators and advertisers can actually do that?

Charlene Weisler: I believe that your recent work involved three different sets of videos?

Devin Fallon: Yes. It was very important for us to get a range of very different types of content. So we were very fortunate in the partners that we were able to work with. We had a movie promo that was putting the viewer into one of the characters from the movie and putting them in the middle of a menacing conversation between the hero and the villain. There was a nice experiential element to it in addition to the narrative – a real space to explore that could take advantage of the 360 experience.

We had a helicopter flyover of the Vegas strip so purely an experiential – no narrative, no voice over – just allowing people to feel the sensation of hanging out of a helicopter a couple of hundred feet above the Vegas strip and take all of that in. 

Lastly we had a little bit of narrative and a little bit of experiential – a bartender giving a demonstration of how to create absinthe. So that was interesting for us because there was not a lot to engage with in physical space in terms of looking around the restaurant. But there is something about that immersive feeling of that VR content that helped pull people into the content. 

Charlene Weisler: How would you suggest that advertisers take advantage of the different types of content and the different types of engagement?

Brendan Murray: One of the things we mentioned before was having the ability to freely explore the environment is very engaging for people. But as a content creator you have to still figure out how to tell your story. So one of the ways we found to be very effective is using audio as what we are calling the “new director.” You as the creator are no longer directing the experience. Whoever picks up the headset or picks up the tablet, they are now in control of what they see. Audio can be a very powerful way to get people to notice those cues that you really want to make sure that they actually do catch – whether it is a character that is introducing themselves, whether you are a brand or an advertiser and you are trying to get people to notice a particular product. Using audio language, verbal mentions can be a very powerful way of doing that. Then also using visuals as well, using neuroscience learnings such as eye tracking. We know that people are drawn to faces, people are drawn to movement. So you don’t have to do something like put up a big flashing arrow to say “look over here.” You can use the environment in ways that still gives people the feeling of their being in control but also guide them through the experience.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Get Ready for the ARF Annual Conference on March 20th and 21st 2017

The ARF is holding their annual conference next week that will herald not only the arrival of new President and CEO Dr. Scott McDonald, it will also highlight the continuation and enhancement of three major research initiatives on mobile advertising research and the impact of advertising pod context.

New Leadership

According to the press release, Scott McDonald has held senior research positions at Time Inc., Time Warner, and Conde Nast, working closely with all five of The ARF's constituent groups – media, advertisers, agencies, research companies and ad tech. In a meeting with the press this past week, he explained that he comes to the ARF at “a critically important time for the media industry, partly because technological change has introduced at least a doubling of the number of consumer touchpoints available to marketers - many of which don’t involve media at all.  This has fundamentally changed how we think of ‘audience’ and has made the term more ambiguous and confusing than it was 10 years ago.”

He sees the ARF as focused on a range of issues from “methods for message development and understanding the consumer to highly technical problems of cross platform measurement, advertising effectiveness attribution and ways of integrating big data. These technical topics are very wonky but consume us because they remain unresolved problems for the industry.”

We are entering a complicated world where there are many challenges to the ad-supported media business model. He noted, “Going into the Internet of Things, you are going to have more and more marketing opportunities to connect with consumers in conditions that are devoid of media like on the fitbit, driving in your car, etc. The nature of advertising is changing in response to changes in technology and consumer behavior. Getting a clear view of consumer behavior and advertising impact has never been more important, more difficult or more complex.”

ARF Research Initiatives

As the industry gets more complicated, it is a great time for research. The ARF is continuing on some major research initiatives as well as introducing new ground-breaking work from member companies and suppliers. “One of the studies that will be talked about at the annual meeting,” explained McDonald, “is an effort by the ARF Research team, in collaboration with several of the member companies, to try to quantify the value of specific media context.  How is the performance of an ad affected – for better or worse – by its media environment?  How is it affected by the other ads around it?”

Jasper Snyder, EVP Research and Innovation outlined the continuation of three major research initiatives by noting that, “We have studies on creating effective mobile advertising, optimizing mobile research quality through the impact of emojis in mobile surveys and exploring the ROI impact of different types of context effects.” Previous How Advertising Works studies by the ARF have focused on the ROI of cross-platform advertising, and using neuroscience to understand how brands are built in the brain. “These studies not only quantified the impact of cross-platform advertising for the first time but also established, through neuroscience, the ways in which advertisers can optimize creative to take advantage of cross-platform effects," he continued. 

“Biometric and neuroscience measurement has proven that optimizing creative to a specific platform provides a great opportunity to boost ad effectiveness,” noted Dr. Manuel Garcia-Garcia, SVP, Research and Innovation, who added, “The challenge we face now is how to improve mobile ad creative so they are perceives as valuable and non-disruptive by the users.”

“One of the jobs of the ARF is to lead with quality research that is pivotal to the industry,” concluded McDonald, “Not only in providing quality research but also trying to provide conceptual clarity that makes it easier for all participants – media companies, ad agencies, advertisers and research companies - to be clear about where they are operating and which questions are being addressed.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com