Do they work together?

Editor’s note: William J. Havlena is vice president, research analytics, at   Dynamic Logic, a New York research company.

Advertisers are beginning to think holistically in planning and measuring advertising campaigns, since the media that are included in the mix can also impact the success or failure of the campaign. Media differ on a number of important characteristics - intrusiveness, engagement, sensory modality, motion, interactivity - that may affect not only the overall effectiveness of each medium but how they complement each other across the stages of the consumer decision process.

Our firm’s CrossMedia Research studies measure the effectiveness of campaigns using online surveys of consumers naturally exposed to advertising. Respondents are recruited using Web intercepts from sites typical of the online advertising or from panels. They complete an online survey containing questions about the brand or product, media usage, brand usage and demographic and psychographic characteristics. Sampling typically begins about two weeks prior to the launch of an advertising campaign and continues for at least 8 to 12 weeks or for the entire length of the campaign. Analysis is based on comparing respondents exposed to advertising in different media combinations to understand the impact of each medium and synergy across media.

Exposure to offline advertising in a particular medium is established using survey questions about the consumption of media vehicles on the plan. For example, opportunity to see (OTS) for magazines is based on the recognition of specific issue covers in which advertising was placed or on reported readership of titles on the media plan. In the case of online advertising, exposure to the campaign is counted directly through the use of cookies. Respondents are then grouped according to the OTS for different combinations of media. The impact of each medium or combination is determined by comparing group metrics for awareness and persuasion against a control group, typically collected immediately prior to the launch of the offline campaign.

Having conducted over 130 of these studies to examine the branding impact of integrated ad campaigns, we have found that different media vehicles demonstrate unique strengths. This body of research includes studies of television, magazine, newspaper, flyer/insert, online, radio, outdoor and cinema advertising. Previous CrossMedia Research has analyzed the complementary effects of TV and Internet advertising (Dynamic Logic, January 2004). Aggregated results from 10 studies indicated that online advertising was particularly effective in associating brands with sponsorships. Internet advertising also produced relatively large increments in brand favorability but had a less dramatic impact on brand awareness or intention to purchase the brand.

This article presents results based on 17 studies in which the individual impact of television and the incremental impacts of online and magazine advertising could be isolated. The inclusion of magazine advertising in the mix offers a new perspective on how media work together.

Compare effects

Five metrics were used to compare media effects. Aided brand awareness is based on respondent recognition of the advertised brand among a set of brands in the product category and is scored dichotomously. Ad awareness is also a dichotomous variable measuring whether the respondent is aware of seeing any advertising (in any medium) for the brand during the prior 30 days. Message association measures whether the respondent is able to correctly associate the advertising message or tagline with the brand (rather than with a competitive brand). Brand favorability and purchase intent/consideration are scored as top-two-box scores on standard five-point scales ranging from “very favorable” to “very unfavorable” (for brand favorability) and “very likely” to “very unlikely” (for purchase intent/consideration).

As seen in Figure 1, all three media - television, magazines and Internet - were effective in increasing consumer awareness, preference and purchase intent. The bars in the figure illustrate the incremental contribution of each medium to five brand metrics over the pre-control baseline level. The TV segment presents the average metric differences between respondents unexposed to the campaign and those who had an opportunity to see only the television advertising. The Internet increase represents the additional increase in the brand metrics among respondents who had OTS for both online and TV advertising. The magazine increase denotes the change in each metric from those with OTS for TV and online to those with the opportunity to see advertising in all three media.

While based on results from only 17 campaigns, a closer analysis of the data reveals the following:

• TV, Internet and magazines produced similar increments in aided brand awareness. If this holds up over a larger data set, it would be an important finding for the online publishers. This result suggests that Internet advertising can build brand awareness similar to TV and magazine within the context of an integrated cross-media campaign.

• Television and magazine advertising produced greater increments than online advertising in advertising awareness. The impact of magazine advertising may be due, in part, to the size of magazine ads and the higher involvement typical of the print environment. On the other hand, banner-based online advertising may be less obtrusive than television or magazine advertising. The small sample size of campaigns prevented separate analysis of rich-media creative units, which might be more comparable to offline media in terms of creating advertising awareness. However, taken together with the results on aided brand awareness, these findings suggest that although Internet creative may be less memorable, it is still able to generate awareness of the brand.

  • As in the case of aided brand awareness, all three media provided similar incremental increases in message association. It appears that campaigns are communicating creative taglines or messages with approximately equal effectiveness across all these media. The differences in viewing time or involvement do not seem to interfere with the ability to communicate a short, focused message in any medium.
  • Magazine advertising performed strongly in producing persuasion, as measured by both increments in brand favorability and purchase intent/consideration. In many of the campaigns tested, the print advertising contained more product information than a short TV spot or an Internet display unit. It will be interesting to see if the relative incremental impact on purchase intent for magazine advertising holds over a larger sample of campaigns - if so, it would prove to be a powerful media combination on a metric that is difficult to move.

These findings (from various product categories including CPG-household, CPG-consumables, CPG-health and beauty, and automotive) are based on a small sample of studies. However, the results do provide some insight into the effect of each medium and are generally consistent with other information in the advertising literature. An earlier analysis based on a sample of only eight campaigns produced a similar pattern of findings (Dynamic Logic, September 2004), suggesting that the overall results may not change dramatically as more studies are included. As more data become available, it will be possible to analyze the impact of media at a greater level of detail, such as by product category or by creative category. In the new age of accountability in marketing, this information could provide much-needed insight leading to more effective and efficient cross-media advertising.

It is also important to note that the results for each medium represent the combined effect of media (including frequency) and creative quality. Since each study is based on a single campaign, the quality of creative executions within each medium will affect the contribution of that medium to the overall campaign impact. However, over a range of campaigns, it is likely that average differences in creative quality across media will become less extreme and that consistent patterns of media impact will emerge.

New perspective

In this early aggregate analysis of CrossMedia Research studies, the inclusion of magazine advertising along with television and online offers a new perspective on how media work together. While magazine advertising showed similar impact on awareness as TV and Internet, it excelled at increasing persuasion scores. On the other hand, online advertising provided substantial increases in awareness of the brand and the campaign message, comparable to those produced by more traditional media. Understanding the branding impact of advertising in each medium and placing it in the context of media cost and reach could provide advertisers with valuable information for planning new cross-media advertising campaigns. 


References

Dynamic Logic (2004a), “TV and Online Advertising Demonstrate Unique Strengths,” What’s In The Mix, January, www.dynamiclogic.com/na/research/WhatsInTheMix/Jan2004.html.

Dynamic Logic (2004b), “Comparing TV, Magazine and Internet Advertising Shows Incremental Impact and Specific Strengths,” What’s In The Mix, September, www.dynamiclogic.com/na/research/WhatsInTheMix/Sept2004.html.