Curated Guide to Research
MediaPost's comprehensive guide to current research in the marketplace.
- Big advertisers appear to be leading the recovery, as the top 10 ad categories' spending rose 8.4% vs. a 3.1% decline among categories 11-plus.
- The first week of the NFL season, which also is the first to have Nielsen's out-of-home viewing estimates embedded in the ratings, has proven to have a significant impact, despite the pandemic. The out-of-home viewing, which mainly comes from bars, restaurants, health clubs, and offices that presumably have been impacted by reduced capacity due to COVID-19, boosted Week 1 of the 2020 NFL season's ratings by 7%.
- Addressable TV ad consortium Project OAR is working with iSpot.tv on measurement specifications to extend addressable TV advertising efforts focused on audience targeting.
- Fifty-eight percent of consumers now think smart-speaker ads are less intrusive than other major formats, and some 52% find them more engaging, while 53% said a smart speaker ad drove them to make a purchase at a later time, according to a recent Adobe survey.
- Monthly U.S. ad-spending pacing has improved consistently since the ad recession began earlier this year following the pandemic lockdown, but there was a slightly negative blip in August, according to a tracking study of ad executives' "run rates" compiled by Wall Street equity research firm Pivotal Research Group. Overall, the trend line has been consistent, moving from a "deceleration" or worsening of ad spending vs. the prior month, bottoming out in July with just 6% of ad execs indicating that, although it bumped up to 15% in August.
- Post- and end-of-the-season action for TV sports franchises has seen sharply lower overall viewership as a result of more sports competition due to scheduling disruptions as well as lower persons using television (PUT) data.
- Brands' messages need to change, said CMO Council Chief Content Officer Tom Kaneshige. "They're expected to take a stand on social issues. They can no longer remain silent."
- CrowdLab helps brands field in-the-moment consumer research, the company says.
- The U.S. advertising economy fell 7.2% during the first six months of 2020, though the rate of erosion is expected to moderate to -2.0% during the second half, according to new estimates released today by IPG Mediabrands' Magna unit. Based on the new data, Magna shaved three-tenths of a percentage point off its projection for the full year, cutting it to -4.6% from the -4.3% it was projecting in its last update in June.
- IPG Mediabrands' Magna unit has revised its 2020 U.S. ad outlook down again, but is keeping its 2021 forecast the same. Magna now projects the U.S. ad economy will decline 4.6%, three-tenths of a percentage point more than the 4.3% it projected U.S. ad spending would fall this year. Its 2021 forecast remains the same: +4.0%.
- Organizations that foster a culture of innovation and curiosity find creative ways to adapt to problems, data from a SurveyMonkey survey suggests.
- While economic disruption moderated the rate of media cost inflation for advertisers this year, it won't actually go negative for any quarter -- including the height of the ad recession in Q2 -- according to an analysis released this week by R3 Worldwide.
- While overall ad spending has declined, a new study of TV and radio ad campaigns indicates they are actually performing better during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis released this morning by performance analytics firm Veritone shows that on average, TV and radio ad campaigns are generating nearly 7% greater "lift" -- defined as increased traffic to the advertiser's website -- over the course of the 15-months analyzed.
- Less than a year after its November 2019 launch, Disney+ is on track to overtake Hulu as the third-largest subscription video-on-demand service in the U.S. by 2024, according to new estimates released today by eMarketer. With an estimated 72.4 million viewers, Disney+ has already penetrated nearly a third (32.1%) of the U.S. OTT marketplace, according to eMarketer.
- A new study by performance analytics firm Veritone shows that TV and radio ad campaigns are generating nearly 7% greater "lift" -- defined as increased traffic to the advertiser's website -- over the course of the 15 months analyzed, on average.
- The partnership expands IBM's data-targeting focus to combine weather, location and point-of-sale data.
- Nearly three months into Q3, traditional TV viewing is down 20%, according to recent analysis, due to the NFL season's later start and summer TV shows' lower viewing results.
- The hard truth is that we are human, and our cultural biases make their way into every aspect of our lives, including our work.
- More encouraging news that ad demand is rebounding from its recent recession is coming out of GroupM's Business Intelligence team. "Global advertising is improving," GroupM Business Intelligence Global President Brian Wieser writes in an update published on Saturday, adding that ad spending is "even going positive in some markets."
- Marketers have doubled their use of digital during the pandemic, compared with sales and offline marketing channels. Their use of online marketing has increased by 88% of which 45% began using digital for the first time during COVID-19. Compare this with sales reps, which increased by 45%; and print, TV and radio increased by 35%. For reference-net of digital: social 51%, email 51%, display, 48%, video 43%, and webinars 40%, according to Google.
- The acquisition of social media marketing firm Socialbakers by customer engagement platform Astute will allow brands to manage several customer-related functions in one SaaS platform, Astute says.
- Prime-time network TV scatter ad prices have remained relatively stable for the Big 3 networks during the first five months of the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks mainly to gains by NBC. But the loss of major live sporting event have dragged average scatter ad prices down for ABC and CBS, according to a Research Intelligencer analysis of data released by television ad price intelligence firm SQAD.
- Most companies have had to pivot from their 2020 marketing plans, but that's not what is making people most nervous, RR Donnelley reports.
- Amidst growing interest in home, garden and DYI, lumber prices -- always a bellwether for the economy -- reached a record Thursday. Amazon is the top online destination for product discovery.
- In the absence of events and life experiences fans crave, brands must create long-term brand affinity by associating with favorite acts.
- More people are shopping online -- and they tend to favor firms that treated them fairly during the COVID-19 pandemic, Experian reports.
- Location ad company GroundTruth just released research on ecommerce conversion rates and data on how in-store visits impact overall online and offline purchasing, providing Q3 ad estimates as advertisers prepare for the holidays.
- Consumer economic confidence has hit a COVID-19 pandemic low, according to the eighth and final wave of pandemic-related tracking conducted by Kantar. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of respondents say they have either felt the impact or expect to be impacted soon by the economic effects of the pandemic, according to Kantar's COVID-19 Barometer.
- Driven by network tv's growing dependence on NFL programming, rights fees could rise 57% to $8.8 billion, MoffettNathanson estimates, as a new round of multi-year contracts are set to get underway.
- Only one in three now believe "young people today will be better off than their parents' generation" and half of adults said they are "more worried about my personal finances than ever before," according to a survey I conducted with QuestionPro Consumer Pulse.
