Curated Guide to Research
MediaPost's comprehensive guide to current research in the marketplace.
- This is the era of Peak TV+. In addition to broadcast and cable, we a bounty of major streaming services: Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video and more recently, Disney+, Apple TV+, HBO Max, and (soon) Peacock. Add in numerous smaller and more niche and targeted streaming services, and there's a lot -- possibly too much -- for most people to choose from. As someone who analyzes TV and streaming content for a living, here are my recommendations for the best shows to binge on this summer.
- Churn rates for OTT services overall rose 6 percentage points versus Q1 2019, reports Parks Associates, which points to more extended sampling trials as the competitive field continues to expand.
- The U.S. ad market had another steep decline in May, falling 31% from the same month a year ago, according to the latest data from the U.S. Ad Market Tracker. May follows a 35% decline in April, and an 11% decline in March, indicating that demand for advertising may not yet have hit bottom. The tracker, a collaboration of MediaPost and Standard Media Index, is based on the change in a composite index value of all the media-buying data processed and modeled by SMI from the major agency holding companies.
- Half of those surveyed in the South are worried about spikes in COVID-19 cases and 69% feel the need to wear a mask.
- "As we enter the third week of mass protests across the US, the number of people going out and speaking against racial injustice has only grown," Horizon Media analysts write in the latest edition of a weekly study tracking a variety of American crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, an especially contentious political environment surrounding the U.S. election campaigns, unemployment and radical injustice.
- After months of social distancing restrictions, followed by some recent relaxation, Americans appear to be bracing for a new round of quarantines. That's the top line of the most recent findings of an ongoing tracking study of American adults feelings of "restriction" vs. "isolation." While the data shows a pronounced drop recently in Americans' sense of being restricted, their sense of being isolated remains acute. Horizon identifies this insight as "preemptive loneliness" as Americans prepare to return to a "disconnected existence."
- The study isolated speed as a performance metric to determine whether there is a true correlation to spend, page views, bounce rates and progress in the conversion funnel, through analysis of mobile site data from retail, travel, luxury, and lead-generation brands.
- Brand trust now ranks second only to price as the most important factors determining whether consumers buy a new brand or remain loyal to one. That's the top finding from the 2020 edition of the Edelman Brand Trust Barometer.
- Dentsu Aegis Network, whose agencies have long been proponents of developing proprietary advertising and media attention metrics, has announced it is working with TV audience measurement firm TVision to develop "attention planning capabilities" based on its proprietary "engagement metrics."
- Dodge leaped seven places from last year's results and is the first domestic brand in the study's history to rank highest.
- Vice said news content related to George Floyd and related protests has been monetized at a rate 57% lower than other non-protest-related news content. Over the past few weeks, Vice has seen new words added to keyword advertisers' "blocklists" that include: "George Floyd", "Black Lives Matter", "protest", "Minneapolis" and "black" people, according to a study released during the group's IAB NewFronts presentation, presented by Marsha Cooke, senior vice president of Vice Impact.
- Nicole Pike left Nielsen in mid-June to take up a position at YouGov as the Global Sector Head of Esports and Gaming -- a position uniquely created for her, it seems.
- Nielsen has published a unique, interesting analysis of shifting consumer sentiment following the COVID-19 pandemic. The study, which utilizes its VisualDNA Personality Survey methodology --a non-incentivized psychometric assessment that triggers emotional and subconscious reactions from respondents -- may seem a little more qualitative than what we normally report on, but it's worth considering.
- "Brand loyalty is up for grabs!" That's the conclusion of a study from performance marketing platform Profitero analyzing Amazon's and other data. The aptly named "The Cheating Consumer" report shows how supply chain shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, led to a significant amount of product shifting, even among brands consumers were previously loyal to.
- One of the unintended consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have been a marked increase in the number of marketers utilizing in-house teams to buy video advertising via programmatic platforms, according to the findings of study of 350 advertisers and agency executives conducted by Advertiser Perceptions for the Interactive Advertising Bureau. The "IAB U.S. 2020 Digital Video Advertising Spend Report: Putting Covid in Context" found a 64% increase in the percentage of marketers buying video advertising via in-house programmatic teams.
- Connected TV proved remarkably immune to the severe Q2 ad-spending cuts, and drew dollars from broadcast and cable TV, a new pre- and post-COVID IAB study finds.
- "What makes competitive advantage truly sustainable is helping consumers avoid having to make a choice," says Marsha Lindsay, CEO, chief analyst, Lindsay Foresight & Stratagem, during an Advertising Research Foundation presentation. Identifying the habits of potential and existing customers will generate greater returns.
- Marketers are still feeling negative about their overall business environment, but they are slightly more optimistic that conditions will improve in the near future. Asked to rate their sentiment currently vs. in the next six months, a World Federation of Advertisers COVID-19 tracking study found their net negative sentiment declined from -43% currently to -19% in six months.
- The ad industry consensus for the global ad economy has moved firmly into negative territory, based on GroupM's update today. GroupM now forecasts the world's ad economy will decline 11.8% in 2020, bringing the current consensus of the Big 4 ad agency holding company forecasting units down to -2.7% this year.
- Months into the global pandemic, a majority of senior marketing executives still say they are deferring their ad campaigns by half a year or longer.
- An intriguing new study finds pet care and fitness are the only two D2C categories living up to past performance levels.
- In a rare self-reflecting study about their own members ability to communicate with and effectively manage their agencies, the World Federation of Advertisers found agencies generally perceive they have less frequent interaction with clients related to providing them feedback on their performance. And when it comes to asking their agencies for feedback about their own performance, there was an even bigger divide with a majority of agencies indicating it either never happens, or only happens on an ad hoc basis.
- For the first time since it has been tracked, Google's U.S. ad revenues will decline this year, according to revised projections released today by eMarketer. "Google's net U.S. ad revenues will decline this year primarily because of a sharp pullback in travel advertiser spending, which in the past has been heavily concentrated on Google's search ad products," explains Nicole Perrin, eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence. "Travel has been the hardest hit industry during the pandemic, with the most extreme spending declines of any industry.
- MoffettNathanson expects a 14% decline in 2020 ad revenues (to $18.4 billion) for the three companies, slightly better than the 15% expected decline in a previous projection.
- Google is working to correct racial as well as gender, sexual orientation, and other types of bias. AI training models pick up all these biases, such as recency.
- A majority of agencies became more flexible with their clients in terms of their terms of payment and other practices, but most held firm on pricing so far during the COVID-19 pandemic, a survey of 130 digital agencies worldwide found. The survey, which was fielded over the past few months by global digital ad services outsourcing firm Uplers, also found that a majority of the agency respondents expect the impact of the pandemic to last for at least six months.
- Do we really need another cleaning product? In an industry that's already over saturated, is their an opportunity for a new company to survive? That's the challenge Alex Reed faced when he and his co-founder, Jon Bostock, launched their D2C cleaning subscription service, Truman's, in February 2019. In such a cluttered market they needed to find their voice and that's exactly what they did.
- If its media advertising and subscription-based media assets were broken out as a separate business, Amazon's media properties -- Prime, Twitch, Music, etc. -- would be valued as a half-trillion-dollar company, according to an analysis published by the equity research team at Needham & Co. The analysis, part of an in-depth review of the company's market value for Needham's initiation of coverage of Amazon stock, includes a "hidden value multiplier calculated by Needham to be 1.5 times its current enterprise value, bringing Amazon's total media asset value to $500.200 billion, or 38% of the current enterprise value of Amazon.
- At a time when many on both the supply and demand side are trying to get a handle on the 2020-21 network upfront ad marketplace or whether there will even be one, eMarketer has weighed in with a revised forecast projecting the volume of ad spending will decline by a third vs. its previous estimates. Its new estimates project the 2020-21 upfront marketplace for broadcast and cable TV networks will total $14.78 billion, down from its previous estimate last year of $21.64 billion.
- GlobalWebIndex survey from April reported 23% of internet users in France ages 16 to 64 said they expected to visit physical stores less frequently post-pandemic, and 27% planned to spend less time in-store. Some 15% of respondents said they would adopt click and collect, and 17% would shop more online for home delivery, according to eMarketer.
