• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, November 15, 2024

Creative storytelling has changed -- and so have the elements assisting creative assets to drive performance.

Intimacy and immediacy -- part of visual dynamism in ads -- have become the two of the most important elements, according to Patricia Gregory, global analytics lead at Kantar, who worked with Meta on the research. 

“There's an overwhelming amount of content," she said. "Combine that with speed and it's so easy to get caught up in whatever the last thing is."

She said the data shows this is a call to back-to-basics marketing and advertising. Creating human connections does not need to be done in an old-fashioned way. It can leverage what is unique about mobile digital video. 

"You can use jump cuts and other things that make sense on a Meta platform," she said. 

There is a gap between creative measurement and market outcomes, she said. Kantar worked with CreativeX to determine how creative impact sales, and what is required to make that connection with consumers.

Key themes, specific to Meta's platforms, were atmosphere, human connections, integrated brand and products, visual dynamism, and others. The features were coded and data passed to Kantar to analyze it through its models.

"Adoption rates are relatively low," she said. "There's an opportunity to lean into things that make a brand different."

She said brands used to buy an ad "and get a click," but Meta has become a more effective platform for brand building. That produces performance, she said. It helps the ad do "double-duty and help the brand develop" long-term associations with consumers.

Atmosphere like colors and music created 67% higher effectiveness in the short term, and 19% higher effectiveness for the long term. Some 47% of the campaigns analyzed did not use music or distinctive color palettes.  

Human connection produced 81% higher effectiveness in the ad, for example, but only 31% of the 55,000 creatives running nearly 1,300 campaigns analyzed used this strategy. The data spanned three years.

The research analyzed more than 13 billion consumer impressions representing five countries that spread across three continents on Facebook and Instagram.

The research also found that incorporating brands into content can enhance intimacy, provided that the brand and product are a natural part of the story. This strategy resulted in a 46% increase in effectiveness for the ad.

Visual dynamism in ads -- an energy created by the arrangement of visual elements, such as fast-paced cuts, animated supers and animation in general -- can boost effectiveness by 74%, with 63% of campaigns analyzed not having this type of creative.

Creating a distinctive atmosphere, such as semiotic storytelling that relies on non-verbal symbols and cues, produces a 67% increase in effectiveness.