Are We Being Fair to New Ads in Our Ad Tracking?

I sat in dozens of meetings with advertisers and their agencies over the past 12 months discussing ‘weak’ performance of TV ads reported in ad tracking results.

This weak performance was puzzling. In most cases, there was a solid TV media plan and the tracking showed the creative to be, once recalled, well branded, enjoyable, motivating, informative with little wear-out.

So why are these TV ads not meeting ad recall levels’ expectations in ad tracking? My response is to turn the question around and ask instead “what should our expectations be in today's media consumption and fragmentation environment?”.

A simple look at historical expectations of ad recall levels versus today’s ad tracking clearly shows that, for the same level of spending, recall is lower in absolute. 

The above is particularly true for new creative platforms that do not benefit from established creative ideas that has been used for 2+ years.

With this in mind, to be fair to new campaign, we need to:

• Change our expectations' level and assess ad recall against today's averages, not historical ones
• Define success based on overall campaign recall as opposed to recall of specific ads by specific media
• Measure creative by form (e.g., video versus still) as opposed to by medium

Chat, challenge or discuss? Strategy@majidkhoury.com

1