January 25, 2023
Consumers Most Receptive To Ads On TikTok, Amazon, Instagram, Google: Kantar
- by Colin Kirkland , September 1, 2021
For the second consecutive year, consumers across the globe reported being most receptive to ads on TikTok, followed by Amazon, Instagram, and Google, according to findings of the 2021 edition of a global consumer ad equity study released today by Kantar.
This is just one major takeaway from MediaReactions2021. Its findings are based on a survey of over 900 marketing professionals and 14,500 consumers across 23 markets worldwide.
The advertising formats with the greatest improvement in consumer receptivity were online and mobile games.
Although these remain the least popular advertising formats in the report, online and mobile games showed the largest YOY increase in ad-equity measurement -- up 5% -- while ads on music streaming services followed, with an increase of 3%.
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The report shows that "trust" is a key component in consumer receptivity.
Alongside cinema and social media stories, consumers now find gaming advertisements to be more "trustworthy," "relevant," and "useful" -- as well as “fun and entertaining.”
While considered slightly less innovative, YouTube, Google, and Facebook are still the most trusted social media platforms.
TikTok had a higher innovation rating, but is not as trusted. Instagram straddles the line, while remaining equally trustworthy and innovative.
Another noteworthy increase in overall ad equity was seen with podcasting advertisements, which have overtaken influencer content as the preferred digital ad medium.
Due to increased ad spend over the past year, podcast ads have become more repetitive and are of better quality.
Localizing strategy also seems crucial to brand success. In 16 of the 23 surveyed markets, a local media brand or a localized version of global media brands ranked first. News and magazines made up 10 of these 16 brands.
The local success seen in these findings, along with the changing attitudes to ads on global digital media brands, affirms the importance of balancing the benefits of global media and the relevance of local media platforms.
Amidst the prominence of digital, consumers were found to react most positively to ads that delivered in-person experiences. Cinema ads and sponsored events ranked first and second.
Not surprisingly, print and radio advertising spend is projected to decline in 2022. Online video formats, influencer content, and social media ads are currently the main focus of most global marketers.
5 comments about "Consumers Most Receptive To Ads On TikTok, Amazon, Instagram, Google: Kantar".
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I guess I'm behind the times, but I have no idea what "equity", a word that gets thrown around a lot lately, has to do with this context.
The problem with this kind on research is that it is highly impressionistic and often reflects the respondent's attitude towards the media vehicle rather than its ads. And, sometimes, it mirrors the varying mindsets regarding ad receptivity or product usage of fans of different media vehicles as well as the kinds of ads they usually find on those platforms. Ultimately each ad campaign must stand or fall on its own merits---whether the product advertised is of interest, whether the ad's creative approach hooks the audience ---or part of it--- and gets people to pay some attention to the sales pitch, whether what the ad has to say is convincing---or reinforces the already positive convictions of current brand users, etc. Advertisers don't make media selection decisions based on highly generalized, non-ad-specific studies of this nature.
Hi Kevin, great question. I guess everyone knows what we mean by brand equity when we talk about toothpaste or cars. Brand eqiuty there is the positive attitudes surrounding those products. In this study we've applied a similar concept to different advertising environments. So we've asked both consumers and marketers what they think of different media channels (TV, online video etc.) and different media brands (both digital platforms as well as TV broadcasters, and news publications and radio stations). The summary equity score is essentially a Net Promoter score where we subtract negative opinions (e.g. boring, repetitive, intrusive) from positive opinions (e.g. fun & entertaining, relevant & useful, better quality). There's more detail on the study and the methodology in the free booklet which is available to download over at https://kantar.com/mediareactions . Hope that helps.
I agree with what Mr. Papazian has written. The results of this kind of survey speaks more to the feelings respondents have for the media channel than it does for the advertisements on it. This is not to say that that doesn't have some kind of impact on ad receptivity, just that an advertiser isn't going to be able to separate the two. The other problem with research like this is that is assumes receptivity translates into satisfying business objectives. Research like this more frequently persuades new advertisers with constrained resources to take a chance on the medium than it does more established adverisers with more robust budgets. The latter will toss spending towards channels like TikTok or the like as part of a "test" from which their own specific learnings can be gleaned.
Some great points, Ed – I’m broadly aligned. This study is exactly that: just impressions. I agree that the attitudes to the media vehicle will be linked to their attitudes to the ads, but last year’s Media Reactions study showed that they are not the same. People can like a media brand for the content it provides but dislike the advertising there, or vice versa. I also agree that the campaign and the campaign creative are king. Also agree that advertisers don’t and also shouldn’t make their media selection decisions solely based on this research. That is not the intent – this is an additional input to sit alongside the fundamentals of media planning (audience, cost, brand effectiveness and ROI data). However, at Kantar, we have validated that our ad equity metric is linked to brand effectiveness (receptive audiences across TV, digital and OOH contexts generally respond better to ads in those contexts). I also believe in the concept of “medium as message”, and I think generalized studies like this one do have an important potential role to play there. The pairing of advertiser brand to media brand is rarely based on much more than gut feel, and studies like this one can bring some greater discipline to that matchmaking process.