• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, November 17, 2024

Daily Mail ran an eye-tracking study with Lumen Research challenging a long-held practice around brand safety.

The industry goal traditionally has been to avoid running ads alongside scandalous, negative or undesirable news content. But when Daily Mail analysts conducted the study with Lumen surveying 1,200 U.S. consumers, the results confirmed what marketers at the publisher knew all along. 

The study examined the impact of ads across Daily Mail's platforms and found readers were equally likely to purchase from brands featured alongside controversial content as they were from ads associated with traditional topics deemed “safe.”

The ads delivered high engagement without harming brand perception, Linda Villani, Chief Revenue Officer, U.S., Daily Mail, told MediaPost.

Despite running ads alongside undesirable news content, Daily Mail discovered its site brought readers in and kept them engaged Villani said, adding that the study showed “it helped boost brand recall in just about every case.”

Results saw nearly half of users were still likely to engage with polarizing news content. One in three users were likely to respond positively to brands advertised alongside content related to crime, political, or scandalous news. More than 80% believe ads placed around polarizing content do not negatively impact brand perception.

Despite seeing positive results from what many might call a controversial study because of its views on brand safety, the publisher's ad formats generated significantly better attention metrics than industry benchmarks, with ad exposure and longer attention driving much better brand recall than expected. 

During this study, Daily Mail’s mobile formats beat industry attention benchmarks by more than 96% on average. Desktop formats beat the industry attention benchmarks by more than 32% on average. In addition, its TikTok format generated the most attention overall, having a significant impact on brand interaction.

"On TikTok, Daily Mail has close to 8,000 attention per mile on average while the industry standard for TikTok ads is just over 3,000 APM," Villani said.

Video significantly drove purchase intent and engagement rates with its mobile x-stream unit seeing the most effective ad unit -- driving the highest recall among respondents with the shortest attention generated.

When asked how the publisher knows the reader made a purchase regardless of what content ran next to an ad, Villani said, “we can’t say that for sure, but our study showed that purchasing intent was higher in those that were shown ads alongside Daily Mail content vs. non-Daily Mail formats -- regardless of the content.”

Villani said the publisher can't directly prove that when consumers see an ad they go out and buy the products, but she can "confidently" say they "definitely think about doing so after visiting our site."

The controlled study using Lumen's eye-tracking software was integrated into Daily Mail test environments that allowed researchers to capture respondents' attention and link it to specific elements on the screen, such as ads or content. By analyzing this data, they could determine how different variables impacted attention and engagement.

Ads were analyzed across Daily Mail's video, mobile and desktop platforms, as well as the publisher's TikTok news account. 

Readers were exposed to a range of ad categories from Entertainment to CPG to Sports and Finance. Readers were then asked how seeing each of these ads, alongside specific content topics, would affect their perception of said brand. Content ranged from controversial topics like politics, crime and celebrity scandals to more safe topics like sports news or typical fashion and style stories.

"We really understand that more attention leads to more recall and this study hammered home that what we do works," Villani said. At least for this publisher.