Advertising

Definition

Brand advertising works mostly through creative publicity, not persuasion
It leaves and/ or reinforces longer-term memory traces and added associations for the brand in the individual consumer’s mind. In doing so, advertising helps to maintain and perhaps increase the number of consumers to whom the brand is “salient”, i.e. in their consideration set as a brand they might buy.
The more traditional view is that advertising works by persuading people that the brand is different or better than a similar competitor. Or that it has special emotional “values”, and that hence they should buy it. There is little systematic evidence that advertising operates like this. Nor does this persuasive view explain why so much advertising is used or needed.

Key Findings

The purpose of advertising is to remind and attract the vast bulk of the customer base who are light, occasional buyers.
Instead of trying to persuade experienced consumers that every advertised brand is better or best, we should accept that advertising mostly needs to refresh, and may occasionally enhance acceptance of the brand as one to buy and/or to consider.
Emotional, entertaining advertisements that creatively publicise the brand are most successful. They work by refreshing memories and thereby nudging up purchase probabilities.
There is no evidence that branding detracts from an advertisement’s likeability
Ad recall and likeability scores for 15-second advertisements are approximately 80% that of 30-second advertisements. But 15- and 30-second advertisements are equal on correct brand identification levels.

Best Practice

Report 13: Brand Advertising as Creative Publicity

Report 49: TV: Back to the Future

Report 57: A Guide to Continuous-Reach Advertising

Report 66: Ehrenberg-Bass Institute Key Media Principles
Marketing Commentary: Can Advertising Creativity Drive Business Growth

Academic Publications:
Creative That Sells: How Advertising Execution Affects Sales
Is Once Really Enough? Making Generalisations About Advertising’s Convex Sales Response Function

Create neuro-rich, likeable advertising – include: music or a jingle, images that attract attention, strong use of colour, words such as taglines, key information that is spoken or sung, faces or animals
Advertising should draw on both rational and emotional processing – create advertising that evokes an emotional reaction
Create advertising that cuts through, gets noticed and gets remembered
Ensure that creative does not overwhelm the brand.
Prominence of brand – make sure your advertising always looks like you and that the brand is easily identified by those you have paid to reach
Brand early, within first 1/3rd of ad; at least 4 times in 30 sec; with at least 1 verbal mention; no large (>10 sec) gaps without the brand present
Avoid: the brand being static for long periods; saying but not showing brand; a big branding ‘bang’ at the end

Reports (110)

Reports

Showing 110 results

What is known about attention (to advertising) Revised

Report 129
July 2024

Advertisers pay for media space in which to place their advertising, with the aim of maintaining/building mental availability for their brands. How well this works depends on the quality of the advertising (creative & branding), and also the quality of the media buy. When buying media space advertisers try to avoid “wastage”. There are two sorts of wastage, (1) reaching people who have no chance of buying from the category and (2) paying for “exposures” that aren’t seen or heard by consumers. This short report is about the latter.

Beyond :30 Study 97
JUNE 2024

How does co-viewing affect TV advertising?

New abilities to measure co-viewing (e.g., TVision’s Presence measure) have prompted questions about whether co-viewed ads should be valued differently from solo-viewed ads.

Beyond :30 Study 89
May 2024

Key Question: How does eyes on screen vary across media?

Advertisers make media decisions based on reach data (e.g., ratings, impressions) and performance data (e.g., clicks). But little is known about how media and devices differ in how long viewers look at ads. Eye-tracking results compare eyes on screen across media on different devices.

Beyond :30 Study 88
October 2023

Key Question: Is news a good context for advertising?

Previous research has revealed mixed effects of a news context on advertising effectiveness, such as brand recall. The effects of news may vary depending on the medium and device used. This study compared matched ads for the same brands in traditional and digital news media, using a field experiment to manipulate ad exposure, and measure its effects on various ad-effectiveness measures.

Report 123
August 2023

We explored the primary objectives of targeted advertising and found that brand growth and equity were the most paramount to marketers. Analysis of 40 target markets and brand and category buying data indicates that, on average, target markets only encompass half of a brand’s existing buyer base. Actionable recommendations to improve targeted advertising decisions are provided.

Beyond :30 Study 78
July 2023

Key Question: How effective are social media ads combined with TV ads?

Advertisers use social media advertising to extend reach beyond TV advertising, or to increase frequency. Frequency across media can have synergy effects. Sometimes synergy only occurs when two media are seen in a specific sequence (e.g., TV first). This lab study tested whether sequential synergy occurs when social media and TV ads are combined. It also compared the relative effectiveness of social media ads with normal TV ads, seen once or repeated.

Report 121
July 2023

For seven different types of co-advertising including advertising with another portfolio variant, retailer, non-profit, bundle partner, sporting event, and competitor, we find no evidence that co-advertising with another brand automatically leads to greater advertising memory and that category buyers rarely remember both brands.

Report 118
JUNE 2023

The value of mass media advertising can be demonstrated by quantifying what happens when it is removed. The current study does this, extending the work of Hartnett, Gelzinis, Beal, et al. (2021) by documenting changes in market share for 365 U.S. brands from 22 consumer goods categories that stopped advertising for at least one year. Market shares of brands without advertising declined, on average, at a steady rate year over year. On average, market share declines were more common and substantial among small brands and those losing share before advertising ceased. That prior findings generalize to a new market and many new categories increases confidence in the results.

Beyond :30 Study 80
May 2023

Key Question: Do brands benefit from adding a logo supporting a social cause?

Often, consumers forget which social and environmental causes a brand supports. This study tested the effects of adding a logo to a brand’s TV ad, to signal its support for a social cause. The social cause in this study was funding minority education, which had heightened relevance at the time of George Floyd’s funeral, when this study took place. This in-home study compared the effects, for a minority audience (African-Americans) versus others, of signalling support for the cause by adding a logo.

Beyond :30 Study 79
May 2023

Key Question: Do brands need to create new ads during a crisis?

During the COVID-19 crisis, brands could continue to use standard ads, or create new ads tailored to the crisis. Potentially, COVID-19 ads were more effective than standard ads, because they were more relevant to consumers at that time. During the crisis, more people were watching news, to get the latest information about COVID-19. Did COVID-19 ads that were informational, rather than emotional, perform better in this informational news context? This in-home study was conducted in April 2020, at the height of the pandemic in the United States.