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Viewability is a challenge for many forms of visual media. How do we really know if a piece of content is seen? “IPG recognized that the industry had never effectively measured TV viewability,” explained Luke McGuinness, president of TVision. “Ads are bought and sold on the assumption of 100% viewability — but that assumption is false.” He should know, since his company tracks a range of television consumption behavior. 

IPG MAGNA recently released a TV viewability study using TVision data. The study noted that regardless of device, viewability indicates whether an ad has the opportunity to be seen but it does not guarantee that a viewer has actually seen the ad or whether that ad is effective.

Charlene Weisler: What prompted the study?

Luke McGuinness: More than $59 billion will be spent on TV ads in 2019, without knowing if the ads are viewable. IPG sought to quantify TV viewability so that TV advertising could be measured in a manner similar to digital.  

Weisler: What are its implications?

McGuinness: The study from IPG Media Labs, using TVision data, found that 29% of all TV ads are not viewable. That means they air to an empty room. When we think about the $59 billion (or more depending on the source), ads that air to an empty room are costing advertisers quite a large sum. By evaluating TV for viewability, advertisers can determine what is working, what is not, and optimize for better performance, and therefore substantially reduce ad waste.

Weisler: Please give me an overview of the methodology.

McGuinness: IPG reviewed six months of TVision data, tracking 5,388 individuals in a nationally representative panel, tracking 39,464 hours of ads for households, 2,992,414 unique ads, 5,961,757 impressions, persons 2+ and C3. Programming and ads were captured via ACR (automatic content recognition). Participants opted to install TV viewability detection technology in their household. Viewability and attention were measured by using computer vision algorithms.

Weisler: Would you say that the results show that TV and digital are comparable in delivering ad messaging? What are the differences that you found?

McGuinness: The fact that the size of the viewability issue for TV very closely mirrors digital video shows that the two face similar (29% for TV; 31% for digital video) challenges in delivering ad messaging, but there are some natural differences in viewability for TV and digital. And these differences are rooted in the fact that digital video on PC and mobile are inherently different experiences. 

With digital, it is presumed that the consumer is there because of the nature of the medium. Someone just clicked to watch a video. As we all know, TV is very different. People leave the room or even leave the home with the TV on.  

Weisler: What is your recommended course of action to improve ad delivery and consumption?

McGuinness: The best step forward for brands is to measure what’s working or not for their historical TV advertising, benchmark versus competitors’ performance, plan a more effective strategy along with their existing planning tools, and measure and optimize on an ongoing basis. By using TVision viewability and attention data, combined with other data such as cost and ratings data, brands can identify higher performing opportunities. For example, the study suggests that brands can find value by buying ad spots outside of prime, and outside of the first spot in the pod. 

Weisler: What about pod position?

McGuinness: In general, the first position in an ad pod may not be worth a premium. Ads appearing first in a pod had 72.2% viewability. Ads in the middle of the pod had 70.3% and those at the end of the pod had 69.9%. Longer ads have higher viewability but doubling the length of an ad does not double the viewability, so the cost of longer ads must be considered.

Weisler: What are next steps?

McGuinness: The immediate next steps are for advertisers and networks to incorporate viewability into their ad buying and selling — and many have already started to do so. They can do this by analyzing their historical performance for viewability, analyzing their competitors’ performance, and learning from that. 

Email metrics took a big leap in 2018 and seem to be on track for similar growth this year. But transactional emails declined slightly, according to the 2019 Marketing Benchmark Report, a study by Acoustic, a cloud provider that separated from IBM in July.  

Acoustic analyzed metrics from brands in more than 40 countries.

It found that overall open rates averaged 24% in 2018, compared with 21% in 2014. Click-throughs hit 3.8%, up from 3.2% four years earlier.

Acoustic attributes these improvements to better list hygiene and more relevant messaging, perhaps driven by GDPR and other regulations.

“Marketers were initially skeptical of privacy and data regulations like GDPR in the UK and CASL in Canada, since they restrict how brands may gain access to and use customer data,” states Loren McDonald, program director of market research, Acoustic.

However, “our data shows that these regulations are actually improving results by driving change within marketing organizations, many of which are becoming more focused on consumer trust and the customer experience,” McDonald adds.

The report also shows a slight decline in transactional email metrics. But the top quartile rate still tops 75% and the mean rate is 44% — 20% higher than the rate for non-transactional emails.

Meanwhile, fewer people are opening emails on their mobile devices. Overall, the usage rate for this category dropped from 49.3% in 2017 to 44.3%. The rate for those opening on webmail declined from 33%.to 40%.

For marketing emails, Canada achieved the highest mean open rate of 37.2%, compared to 24.7% in the U.S. and 24.4% in the UK and Ireland.

The U.S. also lagged in click-throughs, achieving a mean rate of 3.6%, versus 5.0% for Canada. But the U.S. saw the strongest growth year-over-year, at 20%.

The automotive sector drew the highest mean click-through rate — 10%, followed by computer hardware & telecommunications (7.3%), energy & environmental (6.5%) and consumer products & services (5.6%).

Ecommerce was near the bottom with a 3.0% rate, followed by nonprofits with 2.8%.

The insurance industry pulled the highest opens per opens rate — that is, the number of times the recipient opens the email: 4.2%.

In contrast, corporate service and industrial manufacturing & services each generated a 3.4% rate. Next were media & publishing (2.0%), retail & ecommerce (1.9%) and leisure, sports & recreation (1.9%).

The media & publishing category enjoyed the lowest hard bounce rate: 0.16%, versus 1.07% or consumer products & services. This may due to the fact that brands in the field send emails around five times per week — higher frequency results in lower hard bounce rates, Acoustic says.

Not all recipients were happy with the emails they were sent last year. The marketing & advertising industry had the highest mean abuse complaint rate (0.026%) followed by automotive (0.025%), real estate, construction & building products (0.0021)%.

The overall mean unsubscribe rate is 0.11%. But the Middle East & Africa hits 0.22%. In general, the real estate industry pulls the highest rate (0.20%), compared with a low of 0.05% for the energy & environmental field.

A survey by Merkle reveals that when marketers have extra money to invest in marketing, 32% would put it into data, analytics and technology. Some 16% would invest it in digital, 10% in paid media, 10% in search, 9% in content, 9% in resources and teams, 7% in social, 6% in email, and 1% in direct mail, according to data released Wednesday.  

Merkle conducted the survey — The Customer Engagement Report: Q3 2019 — a new quarterly report focused on CRM, in June 2019. It features research, best practices, and strategies focused on customer experience, promotions and cloud services. More than 200 marketers from North American brands participated, spanning retail, travel, financial services, insurance, entertainment, automotive, pharma and B2B.

Personalizing the experience means delivering contextually relevant content based on what brands know about their customers such as what they look to achieve along their path to purchase. It is becoming more evident that marketers who consistently deliver personalized cross-channel experiences are seeing moderate to substantial conversion improvements.

Search engine marketing has seen some of the largest major gains at 39% from personalization, according to the study, which cites data from Econsultancy. About 54% have seen a “minor uplift.” Offline saw a major uplift of 37%, followed by websites at 33%; email with 27%; SMS at 24%; social media with 23%; and mobile apps at 21%.

Email remains one of the most valued channels, despite marketers acknowledging they would invest little in online and direct mail if they had additional marketing dollars to spend. Some 52% cited email as the most valuable marketing channel proven for retaining customers, and 15% said it is the most valuable marketing channel for acquiring new customers.

About 48% said they will reduce budgets for direct mail, while 20% plan to increase budgets for direct mail and 11% have never invested in direct mail.

Marketers also said they are looking to integrate several types of media, which means investing in ways to acquire customer data. To accomplish this, 25% of marketers outsource creative work, and 45% collaborate with vendors to achieve creative goals.

It takes consumer data to build a better experience. Some marketers are using promotions or “do, gets,” which required the brand to give the consumer something of value for their data.

Some 84% of consumers participating in the study said they would review a product or brand, 83% would watch a brand video, while 80% would give up their email address. About 69% said they would upload a photo of a receipt for a recent purchase, 63% would use mobile in-store text, 53% would enroll in a loyalty program, 40% would attend a physical location for an event, and 27% would share content or a photo to their social network.

Merkle said if marketers take this route, bigger isn’t always better to motivate consumers. The likelihood of participation increases only slightly when consumers are offered a large prize compared with a smaller one -- something to make the consumer feel special.

As McClatchy and Google News Initiative move forward with their local 

, The Compass Experiment announced that Village Media’s CMS will power the site.

Mandy Jenkins, general manager of The Compass Experiment, announced the partnership via a blog post this week.

The Youngstown publication is set to launch in 60 days and is the first in three promised local, sustainable news sites to be created through The Compass Experiment.

The Ohio-based publication was announced five weeks ago, after learning that Youngstown’s 150-year-old local newspaper, The Vindicator, would cease publication, leaving the city without a local news source.

“The Village Media platform is appealing because it is purpose built for local news operations like ours. Their sites are fast, mobile-browser responsive and easy to navigate, and also include features such as classifieds, obituaries, autos, auctions and voluntary pay,” Jenkins wrote.

She added Village Media is “worth emulating because its most mature sites are profitable.”

The Youngstown publication will adopt Village Media’s look and feel, in addition to its revenue strategy, which focuses on local digital advertising and content sponsorship, the post stated. 

Village Media, located in Sault St. Marie, Ontario, began as a small, hyper-local website that distributed coupons for local businesses. It has since expanded into a community of 11 owned-and-operated sites and 15 partner sites.

As the company expanded, it has frequently moved to communities where the local paper has closed to launch a new source of news.

Village Media’s collaboration with McClatchy and Google News Initiative will be its first in the U.S.

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Marketers face challenges in explaining to consumers how the brands they buy from use data to personalize their experiences.

When asked whether personalization improves the digital experience, 39% agreed, while 37% were indifferent and the remainder disagreed, according to data released Wednesday from Factual.

The same pattern occurs when consumers are asked whether personalized content helps them discover new products. Fifty-three percent of respondents agree that personalized content helps them find products, while only 16% of respondents disagree.

The report — Consumers & Data Privacy Perceptions — shows that 24% of the 1,002 survey respondents in the U.S. between the ages of 18 and 65 were least comfortable sharing their data to get personalized experiences in social networking sites and apps like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Overall, consumers across all generations prefer to see personalized content on Google, Amazon, and Facebook, as well as in emails.

Factual commissioned the University of Southern California, MS in Applied Psychology Program (USC MAPP) to explore consumer sentiment and behavior around data privacy and the use of data to personalize advertising. 

Some 32% of respondents strongly or somewhat agree that they would share information about themselves to receive personalized content, and 36% are indifferent.

The total number jumps to 73% for Millennials — 36% agree and 37% are indifferent — and 72% for Gen Z, where 35% agree and 37% are indifferent, demonstrating that younger generations who grew up in a digital world are more willing to share data for proven benefits.

The data suggests that consumers have become more aware of how their data is used to provide a variety of experiences. Some 59% say their data is used to provide targeted advertising and offers, while 47% say the data is used to deliver relevant search results; 42%, to help companies better understand their users; 40%, to create personalized product experiences; and 28%, to improve public safely products and initiatives.

The study points to several reasons -- including that consumers are now paying more attention to terms and conditions on apps, and they take the time to learn how to control the setting on their mobile devices and on social media.

Some 49% of respondents said they learned how to adjust their privacy setting on their mobile phone, while 48% said they can now adjust privacy settings on social media, 46% said they are paying closer attention to privacy agreements, 41% said they adjusted location sharing settings, 29% used an ad blocker, 27% disabled cookies, and 13% provided false information to companies.

Typically education fosters a sense of security, yet only 34% say they either strongly agree or somewhat agree when asked whether they are comfortable sharing their location data for marketing purposes. And only 34% are aware of how their location data is used, which indicated there’s still a lack of understanding.

Some 72% of those participating in the study have concerns, including 64% who cite stolen passwords; 59% who say they don't know how their personal information is used; 54% who are concerned that information is sold for profit; 53% who are concerned about using the data for location tracking; 53% who worry about not knowing how their online personal information is collected.

When it comes to location data, 53% of survey participants are most concerned with identify theft and fraud and their home address being obtained. Some 56% are concerned about not knowing how their location data is being used and 48% say they have concerns over digital or physical harm as a result of their location information being illegally obtained.

Consumers define personal information as home address, phone number, birth date, location data, email, name, messages send via messaging apps, work address, and online or mobile browsing habits.

While the majority of consumers surveyed admit to having some concerns around data privacy, 20% are not concerned, while 6% aren’t concerned at all and 14% are neutral on the issue.

Baby Boomers, a group who grew into the digital economy, are the most concerned about their data privacy, with 76% saying they are either somewhat or very concerned. No surprise that younger generations — Gen Z and Millennials — a group who were born during the advent of the digital economy, are less concerned about data privacy and are more willing to share data, especially if it will benefit them by providing an improved experience.

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