Total Recall? Know what your customer sees
Marketers need to more rapidly and enthusiastically embrace the latest consumer insight technologies to maintain sufficiently accurate measurement of their digital campaigns' success or failure, which now goes far beyond simple ad impression figures, according to a study of over 1,200 consumers throughout the UK and US, jointly conducted by insight tools provider Cint and eye-tracking specialist Sticky.
The 'See-Say' study, designed to ascertain whether what participants say they saw is what they really saw - ('seen' versus 'recall'), covered four different target groups and looked at ads from a variety of major brands, including Levis (UK and US), Netflix, Wuaki, Bank of America and ING Direct.
The participants were shown a number of adverts and then subsequently asked if they recalled seeing them. This was then compared to the gaze patterns that had been monitored by Sticky's technology, and a See-Say gap was unveiled, i.e. people sometimes say they have not seen what they actually did seen and vice versa.
The gaps varied across the board and indicated that there can be a real disparity in the gap size even when like-for-like advertisements are shown to the same group. However, across all the tested ads in this study there were an average of 25% false negatives (actually saw the ad but didn't recall doing so) and 10% false positives (recalled seeing an ad but actually hadn't).
"The rise of online channels means digital marketing campaigns are an excellent avenue for marketers, but this presents a problem in terms of measuring true reach," said Mathias Plank, CEO for Sticky. "The norm has become to measure impressions and click through rates, but this is not a true indication of ad reach in terms of whether the audience has seen it. There is a danger of over or under estimating the media investment, which is exactly what our study highlighted, and shows marketers need to better understand the effect of the online display ad campaigns they invest in, as well as better understand the audience they are targeting."
"Our study reinforces the need for a 'combination approach' to gathering insight in order to better direct spend to increase ROI," concluded Cint's CEO, Bo Mattsson. "Using the latest technologies and survey panels made up of well-profiled respondents is the key to ensuring that your digital ad spending is better targeted, and that your ROI is enhanced, because it means you can cut spending on ads that aren't seen."
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