Advertising best practice, evidence and insights

What we know about campaign and brand tracking

Article • WARC Best Practice, January 2019

Explores the current thinking and writing on campaign and brand tracking, as the subject undergoes fundamental change due to an influx of new ideas from behavioural economics and research into low attention processing of advertising.

What we know about brand and advertising awareness

Article • WARC Best Practice, December 2018

This article examines and provides guidance for marketers attempting to understand awareness, covering approaches, definitions and key insights.

What we know about recall and recognition

Article • WARC Best Practice, December 2018

Provides marketers with information and guidance about using recall and recognition to test the effectiveness of a campaign.

Anatomy of effectiveness: A white paper by WARC

Article • WARC Exclusive, June 2019

Summarises current thinking about how to advertise effectively, given the current sense that advertising is not driving the growth it should be.

Effects of face images and face pareidolia on consumers? Responses to print advertising: An empirical investigation

Research Paper • Gianluigi Guido, Marco Pichierri, Giovanni Pino, and Rajan Nataraajan, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 59, No. 2, 2019, pp. 219-231

This research investigates whether print advertisements featuring faces (i.e., face advertisements) or facelike images (i.e., pareidolian advertisements) better capture consumer attention than advertisements that do not include such elements.

Six-second advertisements on television: Best practices for capturing visual attention

Article • Henry G. Wolf VII and Paul Donato, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 59, No. 2, 2019, pp. 196-207

Six-second advertisements are used widely in digital video but only recently have appeared on television.

How physiological appeals work for QSR brands

News • 24 May 2019

Quick-service restaurant chains may be able to fuel purchase intent by tapping “physiological appeals” based on sensory or behavioural imagery in their TV ads, a study published by the Journal of Advertising Research (JAR) has found.

Why the first half-second of a mobile ad is a must-win moment

Article • Geoffrey Precourt, Event Reports, MMA Impact, March 2019

Research led by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), the industry body, found that ads typically have less than a second to engage consumers on mobile.

Audio ads relating to consumer activity are more effective

News • 14 May 2019

Advertising that connects content with activities being carried out by an audience boosts its effectiveness in terms of engagement and recall, according to new research.

TV ads have 'variable shelf life' on DVRs

News • 10 May 2019

Television spots may have a “variable advertisement shelf life” among DVR audiences depending on the genre of content they appear in, according to a study published in the Journal of Advertising Research (JAR).

A neuroscientific method for assessing effectiveness of digital vs. print ads: using biometric techniques to measure cross-media ad experience and recall

Research Paper • Andrea Ciceri, Vincenzo Russo, Giulia Songa, Giorgio Gabrielli, and Jesper Clement, Journal of Advertising Research, Digital First, April 2019

Marketers can choose among various media to convey advertising, ranging from printed advertising on paper to websites through the Internet and mobile through smartphones and tablets.

Why media context matters for successful ads

News • 26 April 2019

Marketers should consider the media context in which their ads appear when seeking to get their messages remembered, drive brand recognition and recall, and launch new products, according to a paper in the Journal of Advertising Research (JAR).

How the US Open Tennis Championships served up a new logo

Article • Stephen Whiteside, Event Reports, BRITE, March 2019

The US Open Tennis Championships launched a new logo in 2018, a strategic decision that was intended to achieve various goals.

Media 100: Lessons from the world's best campaigns and companies for media innovation 2019

Rankings • Rankings Articles, April 2019

Discusses lessons from the top Media 100 campaigns, including an interview with Stephen Allan, Chief Executive Officer, MediaCom and the top 2019 campaigns.

Cinema ‘turbocharges’ channel planning in combination with TV and online media

Article • Alex Brownsell, WARC Exclusive, April 2019

MESH Experience, the market research company, presented new research into cinema media in a WARC Webinar alongside National CineMedia and Screenvision Media.

Cinema as a superhero medium

Article • Fiona Blades, Doug Pulick and Sarah Barasch, WARC Webinars, March 2019

Fiona Blades, president and chief experience officer at MESH Experience, Doug Pulick, SVP of research at National CineMedia and Sarah Barasch, SVP of insights and measurement at Screenvision Media, analyse how cinema compares to all other touchpoints.

The impact of rational, emotional, and physiological advertising images on purchase intention: How TV ads influence brand memory

Article • Charles Young, Brian Gillespie, and Christian Otto, Journal of Advertising Research, Digital First, March 2019

Academic theory and practitioner-performance metrics both focus on consumer recall and recognition of advertising content.

Impact of Media Context on Advertising Memory: A Meta-Analysis of Advertising Effectiveness

Research Paper • Eun Sook Kwon, Karen Whitehill King, Greg Nyilasy, and Leonard N. Reid, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 59, No. 1, 2019, pp. 99-128

Media professionals and scholars have examined the influence of media context on advertising effectiveness for more than 50 years, but clarity regarding media-context effects remains lacking, amid an abundance of mixed results.

Advertisements in DVR time: The shelf life of recorded television commercials in drama, reality, and sports programs

Research Paper • Bob Kent, Buffy N. Mosley, and David A. Schweidel, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 59, No. 1, 2019, pp. 73-84

Time-shifted television can time-shift advertising. This study explores the frequency and timing of digital video recorder (DVR) advertising views in a sample of 2015–2016 drama, reality, and sports programs.

Revisiting the relationship between ad frequency and purchase intentions: How affect and cognition mediate outcomes at different levels of advertising frequency

Research Paper • Jennifer Lee Burton, Jan Gollins, Linda E. McNeely, and Danielle M. Walls, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 59, No. 1, 2019, pp. 27-39

This research examines the influence of repeated exposure to advertisements on purchase intentions. Contrary to prior findings that wear-out happens after exposure to an advertisement 10 or more times, consumers who saw an advertisement 10 or more times had greater purchase intentions than consumers with less exposure.

The Interactive Ad Effect: CTAs in Mobile Video Shoppable Ads

Research Paper • IAB, October, 2018

Exploring shoppable mobile video ads and how consumers in the US interacted with them, focusing on video-based interactive ads in a mobile web environment with the goal of understanding what initial calls to action work best.

Live Video Streaming - A Global Perspective

Research Paper • IAB, June, 2018

Provides brand marketers and publishers with a global benchmark and insights into the value of live streaming to engage with global audiences.

The evolution of effective frequency

Research Paper • Chris Sloane, Admap, March 2019

Looks at the history of frequency theory and what this can teach us in today's media environment.

Is it time to move on from frequency?

Article • Michael Chadwick and Richard Frampton, Admap, March 2019

Considers if the industry has fallen out of love with frequency as our consumption and understanding of media has evolved.

How biometrics can track attention to TV ads

News • 01 March 2019

Biometric methods like eye tracking and skin conductance are a powerful resource for measuring the attention received by television advertising, according to a new study in the Journal of Advertising Research (JAR).

Campaign tracking