The expectations of advertisers are clearly formulated: They want effective campaigns with maximum advertising impact and at the lowest possible cost. In order for this goal to be achieved, various parameters must be defined when implementing advertising campaigns in order to meet the campaign goals. However, identifying the parameters that really contribute to advertising impact requires many years of expertise and analytical procedures.
It is not surprising that there are increasing voices in the industry calling for a uniform and comprehensible measurement of advertising impact. As a result, agencies have committed themselves to developing new models to optimize advertising impact so that advertising budgets can be used even more efficiently.
Which parameters are the most important for measuring advertising impact?
While contact dose, content and media environment remain important criteria for evaluating advertising impact and are taken into account by many media agencies in their evaluation mechanisms, other extremely relevant variables such as actual contact distribution and target group reach are ignored. However, these are essential to comprehensively measure advertising impact and optimize campaign settings. Only when advertising contact is achieved with the right contact dose, taking into account the desired target groups and taking into account the right media environment, can the intended advertising effect be achieved.
It is important to recognize the difference between the calculated contact dose, in terms of average contacts (OTS — opportunity to see), and the actual contact distribution. The contact dose is defined as the average number of contacts made by each individual person reached. Since the average contact is a purely calculated mean and does not provide any information about the distribution of contacts in the individual contact classes, the contact dose itself does not provide sufficient information about the advertising effect. The OTS only provides information on how often the target group reached (net reach) has seen the advertisement on average, but not how often the individual people have actually seen the advertisement. Since a branding effect is typically only achieved after 4 to 5 contacts with the advertising medium, it is crucial for the success of a campaign that the actual contact dose per user is evaluated and optimized in more detail.
Other measurability problems: Net ranges
However, the problem of measurability and maximization of advertising impact cannot be solved by using the right measurement methods alone. The incorrect and opaque net ranges in the area of moving images should also concern the industry. The problem: The overarching associations such as AGF (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Video Research) and AGOF (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Online Research) are reaching their limits with their panel logic to represent real user behavior and actual net reach of target groups, among other things due to the progressive fragmentation of the moving image market.
Is VAST 4.0 the solution? No!
The OWM (Organization of Advertisers in a Brand Association) cites the lack of dissemination of the Video Ad Serving Template 4.0 (VAST) as a central cause of the lack of measurability of online video inventory. This leaves out neutral solutions that are technically available: the allocation of video inventories via SSPs, which communicate with DSPs within the framework of MRC and IAB standards and thus enable comprehensive measurability for video. These standards form a neutral basis, function independently of VAST 4.0 via tags and require the integration of third-party measurement to prove target group reach and visibility.
conclusion
In order to measure and maximize advertising impact, advertisers must ensure that parameters and variables are selected that provide verifiable information about the actual success and efficiency of the campaign. In addition, marketing decision makers should and can ensure comparability in the impact of their moving image campaigns between linear TV and digital based on the behavior of their target group by collecting and taking into account the right measurement values. Contact frequencies actually achieved can be comprehensively mapped and controlled via programmatic campaigns and are much more relevant for advertising impact than GRPs.
This post is first posted at Adzine appeared.
