In 1975, J. Walter
Thompson did a study estimating the average consumer was exposed to about 500 brand impressions each day. Today, Nielsen estimates it’s more like 5,000. While it’s unlikely anyone knows
the precise number, everyone knows the volume of ads bombarding consumers -- from TV screens to out-of-home media to the devices in their very hands -- grows each day. Yet no one has tracked how this
torrent of ad messages is impacting consumers’ sentiment toward advertising, as well as the individual media that carry them. Until now, that is.
Beginning today, Real-Time
Daily and Qriously will begin collaborating on just that. Using Qriously’s real-time mobile polling system, we will track and report on consumers’ perceived sentiment toward
advertising overall, and across various media -- new and old. The data is entirely self-reported, but the methods used to track them are scientific and consistent, and we believe this will be an
interesting barometer for understand consumers’ attitudes about advertising, especially as new forms of media emerge to vie for their attention.
We’re calling it the Ad Sentiment Index (ASI), and its modeled on the notion of the Consumer Confidence Index, but instead of
tracking their economic confidence, we’ll be tracking how they perceive the role advertising plays in influencing their disposition with brands.
To create the index, Qriously,
which taps the value of opinion to create a more meaningful mobile ad experience for both consumer and advertiser, polls hundreds of Americans a day on mobile devices, asking questions in the
space where an ad might otherwise run. The questions ask whether ads influence people’s feelings about brands in general, and specifically how ads on radio, in magazines, on Facebook, Twitter or
other Internet venues, on mobile devices, in newspapers, seen outdoors or on TV, influence them. The index has tracked these responses since March. With the testing period complete, MediaPost is
bringing the results to the general public.
“Consumers enjoy sharing their opinions, especially when they’re asked politely,” explains Qriously North America
General Manager Joe Zahtila. “We value these opinions a great deal, and use them to do research as well as to serve consumers relevant ads. We're pleased to partner with MediaPost to learn how
Americans' opinions toward various forms of advertising change over time.”
Like the RTB 500 we launched earlier this year with OwnerIQ, one of the goals of Real-Time Daily is
to leverage the power of real-time data to help readers gain some perspective and make better decisions on how they invest in media and other marketing communications.
Also like the
RTB 500, we consider these works in progress, and value your feedback -- good or bad -- so that we can figure out how to improve things, or do other things. We have some other real-time data indices
and composites in development, and your feedback is essential to making sure they deliver on what we’re setting out to do: Give the world's most sophisticated consumers of media -- the
professionals who plan, buy and sell it -- better information to make their investments decisions. As always, you can post them publicly in the comments field that follows this post, or contact me
directly at joe@mediapost.com.
A complete description of the Ad Sentiment Index methodology can be
accessed by the link in the index.
Image supplied courtesy of Shutterstock.