Curated Guide to Research
MediaPost's comprehensive guide to current research in the marketplace.
- Native ad formats including paid branded content and influencers now represent the biggest share of digital budgets, supplanting options such as paid search, display, social and video in the media mix.
- 2021 is the year of experience for Google. YouTube doesn't seem to follow the same standard (completely), according to Searchmetrics data.
- Netflix accounted for the top seven of 10 most in-demand original series.
- The U.S. ad market expanded nearly 25% in March vs. the same month last year. Importantly, it was the best March since SMI began indexing the U.S. marketplace, and it was up 7.2% vs. March 2019, more than making up for any erosion in 2020.
- HBO Max's gains were driven by its debuting movies in sync with theater releases. Paramount+ and Discovery+ also showed strong growth, and Disney+ scored the period's two highest-rated series.
- Much of this comes via ESPN and ABC -- the latter now shares in some of the NFL programming spoils, due to the new long-term contract.
- But when it comes to music, 45% of consumers overall -- and 67% of Millennials -- say they would rather pay than have ads on their streaming service.
- The share of desktop video ad impressions deemed risky soared 22% during the second half of 2020, according to the latest edition of Integral Ad Science's (IAS) "Media Quality Report."
- By at least one important quality measure -- so-called "viewability" -- connected TV ads are the top of the digital food chain.
- In response to the VAB's letter, Nielsen said in a statement late Friday: "We have been clear and transparent with the MRC and our clients on every change in protocol we needed to make during Covid to keep our people and panelists safe.... A single third party audit is the best approach for the industry and we will work closely with the MRC on all audit requests." VAB president/CEO Sean Cunningham issued a statement in response on Friday, saying: "Nielsen's refusal to take any type of action, in the face of a research-backed request from its key industry stakeholders, is profoundly disappointing and a massive disservice to a TV marketplace that has had a stellar track record for collaboration and transparency."
- Amazon's total video and music video spend for TV, movies, and other content for its Prime Video and other services rose 41% in 2020 to $11 billion, according to its annual report -- a level rivaling other digital and legacy media companies. On a profit-and-loss basis, however, Amazon is still behind the bigger players. It grew 17% to $6.8 billion (from $5.8 billion in 2019) for its video and music content.
- Only 2% of media agency executives expect their connected TV (CTV) ad budgets to decline this year, while 86% say they will increase, 19% saying it will be "dramatic." Those are among the findings of a survey of 177 U.S. media agency execs conducted by Pixability in February.
- By a margin of more than two-to-one over its next-closest competitor, U.S. media agency execs say YouTube will be the biggest beneficiary of shifts from TV ad budgets into digital media during 2021.
- In the first month to reflect a year-over-year comparison with the beginning of the COVID-19-related ad recession, national ad spending expanded 22% in March vs. the same month last year.
- Most marketers say they are effective in delivering a pleasing customer experience, but some suffer from lack of time and resources, Ascend2 reports.
- Scott Brown, the head of Nielsen's audience measurement product, is leaving to join Experian, MediaPost has learned.
- The Salesforce survey of more than 1 billion shoppers from 40 countries and 22 billion visits across nearly 2,000 ecommerce sites shows retailers' digital gains extended their growth into Q1 2021.
- It may seem counterintuitive that in a year when many consumers were stuck at home due to a global pandemic, mobile device traffic grew while desktop and tablet usage declined, but that's the result of a year-over-year analysis of traffic to more than 900 global brands representing more than 20 billion individual user sessions, compiled by Contentsquare.
- Netflix's percentage of existing subscribers leaving the service was a low 2.5% for Q4 2020.
- CTV has been a major beneficiary of the COVID-19 pandemic, and is now perceived as being a better media option for reaching consumers than linear TV, according to advertisers and agencies surveyed by MTM Global for video advertising developer Tremor Video and its Unruly unit.
- Older Americans 50+ are nearly four times more likely to say they feel social media ads are "untrustworthy" versus TV ads (19% vs. 5%).
- Total U.S. pay TV subscriber homes dropped 7.3% in Q4 2020 -- the fifth in a series of consecutive 7% quarterly declines.
- In the first large-scale study of facial expressions used to study emotions, and their relationship to video ad sharing, sadness depressed response, but disgust, along with pleasurable emotions, increased sharing.
- For all the hype surrounding the efficacy of influencer marketing, the majority of active social media users in the U.S. say they will never buy a product or service promoted by social media influencers. That's one of the noteworthy conclusions of a survey fielded by Visual Objects in March among U.S. active social media users.
- As trade tensions with China continue, a new report from GroupM's Business Intelligence unit indicates the nation currently accounts for about 5% of the revenue for the world's biggest marketers. The analysis, conducted by GroupM Business Intelligence Global President Brian Wieser, analyzed the 40 biggest marketers not based in China. Based on the those disclosing the revenue they derive from the nation, Wieser estimates China currently accounts for about 5% of the Big 40's revenues overall.
- Upper-income households are more likely to trust brands with their personal data, GfK reports.
- UBS estimates total cable and telco-based services will grow 3.6% in 2021.
- It's no surprise by now that 2020 was a banner year for digital ad spending, and that it grew its share considerably as many legacy advertisers were forced to accelerate "digital transformation" that they may have been slow-walking prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. What may be surprising, however, is that digital's increasing share of ad spending is being concentrated in fewer digital hands.
- The killer app for interactive ads appears to be that they simply stand out, are good at generating attention, and make people curious enough to move on to the next stage and actually interact with them. That is the finding of a national survey conducted by IPG Mediabrands Magna and Media Lab units, along with Verizon Media.
- Ampere Analysis puts SVOD subs at 340 million, versus U.S. population of 330 million.
