Getting the best return from advertising dollars is about getting the right recipe using attention, creativity and spend, according to research led by the Australian Council of Advertising (ACA).
The industry-first study into the effectiveness of advertising has revealed how the right mix of powerful creative, high-attention media and increased investment will maximise brand ROI.
The Triple Opportunity of Attention study - conducted Rob Brittain, Orlando Wood and Professor Karen Nelson-Field - combines data from the ACA Effectiveness Database with attention metrics from Amplified Intelligence and emotional response testing from System1 to assess the impact of creativity, attention and Extra Share of Voice (ESOV) on business growth.
The ACA Effectiveness Database contains hundreds of Australian Effie Award-winning campaign entries judged on their effectiveness and proven results in the marketplace.
The study found:
Platform is crucial: Attention decays faster on some platforms than others, and this decay rate plays a fundamental role in business success. While all platforms impact campaign effectiveness, higher-attention platforms deliver more mental availability for a brand than low-attention platforms and have a larger impact on key business metrics such as customer acquisition, profit growth and market share.
Creativity is king: Attention to drama, emotion and critical moments helps creative work achieve maximum impact – firstly by extending the audience’s attention and secondly by helping to lodge the brand in the audience’s memory, driving positive business effects. Furthermore, creativity and platform go hand-in-hand: higher-attention media platforms enable creative to work more effectively, turbocharging the business effects by up to 65%. On the other hand, creativity can’t overcome the limitations of low-attention platforms.
Spend: Excess Share Of Voice (ESOV) continues to drive positive business effects. On the other hand, low investment (negative ESOV) limits or depresses the impact of highly creative and emotional ads.
The research found that while each factor on its own will help the commercial impact of an advert, it is when the three factors are combined and working in unison that maximum ROI is achieved: a high-attention platform unlocks the ability of ESOV and creativity to move the commercial needle, investment is amplified with the right creative on the right platform, and creative, emotional work is best showcased on a high-attention platform backed by spend.
This represents the triple opportunity of attention for advertisers.
“You can make a great campaign and, depending on your media plan, it can gain a little or a lot of attention from your target market," says performance marketing specialist Rob Brittain.
"The triple opportunity for marketers and advertisers is emotive advertising, placed on higher-attention media platforms and supported by an appropriate level of investment. These are the advertising investments that, by far, have the biggest impact on their business growth."
Professor Karen Nelson-Field, founder, Amplified Intelligence, says every single format, platform, ad length and demographic has a slightly different attention decay curve.
"This is literally why not all reach is equal," she says.
"Attention decay impacts how much attention is paid and how many branded moments are seen, it also impacts the number of people who see your brand because fewer people watch across time.
“I guarantee that with less reach and fewer eyes on your brand, you won’t be thought of at the purchase occasion but your larger competitor will. The opportunity for marketers is what they can do creatively to nudge attention so that this decay curve is less acute.”
Orlando Wood, chief innovation officer, System1, says creative is key in that it can develop an emotional response in the viewer by drawing on the artistic principle of moto e azione; the outward expression of internal feeling, the moment of revelation, an emotional turning point.
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