Moving image advertising works - especially on advertising recall and brand awareness

The key findings of the study at a glance:

• Moving image advertising drives all indicators of advertising impact, especially advertising recall and spontaneous brand awareness.
• Double contacts with the same advertising format also double the impact - on every moving image channel.
• Combinations of different TV advertising formats achieve the strongest spontaneous advertising recall.
• TV and YouTube can reinforce each other.

Spending on moving image advertising has risen continuously in recent years, with more and more moving image formats coming onto the market at the same time. One important aspect has so far remained largely unexplained: how does moving image advertising work on different media and what role do placement, frequency of contact and the combination of communication measures play?

Studies that provide comprehensive and detailed answers to these questions have so far failed due to their technical and methodological complexity. The Mediaplus Group, SevenOne Media and Google are now publishing a study that enables a comprehensive qualitative comparison of impact at advertising medium level: the "Media Equivalence Study: Video".

The market research institute Facit Research developed a technically highly complex, experimental study design and tested the advertising impact of TV, YouTube and Facebook under the same conditions. The YouTube formats were played out both on the desktop and via the app. In the case of Facebook, the ads were placed in the personal newsfeed in the Facebook app.

Cosima Giannachi, Managing Director of Mediaplus Suisse, commented in a press release: "Whether an advertising spot has the same advertising impact on television, online video channels and social media platforms is a question that plays a key role in the development of a media strategy. As the impact of the media can generally be seen across countries, we can use the results of the study conducted in Germany to further optimize traditional reach planning in Switzerland. With the help of the results from the study, it is therefore possible to add the qualitative aspect of impact to the effective reach of campaign contacts and thus achieve even better results."

Kerstin Niederauer-Kopf, Managing Director of Facit Research, explains: "The uniqueness of the study is partly due to the constellation of the client community. My team and I are delighted that, together with our partners, we have succeeded in providing the market with greater transparency and orientation on a relevant issue. On the other hand, the study design is completely unique: with the help of an extremely ambitious technical design, we have managed to measure the impact of moving images - individually and in combination - on the relevant channels, their specific applications and end devices in a personal environment. And with unprecedented precision."

"To date, there has been no unit of account that Effective impact corridor of diverse moving image formats and their combinations for media planning. With this comprehensive generic study, we have now succeeded for the first time in the market in optimizing intra- and cross-media campaign planning based on their degree of effectiveness and thus the classic reach planning in order to weight qualitative effectiveness aspects of the advertising medium," says Andrea Malgara, Managing Director of the Mediaplus Group.

Guido Modenbach, Managing Director Market Intelligence SevenOneMedia: "The study gives a very differentiated view of the unique impact spectrum of video advertising and provides valuable facts for integrated 360-degree planning across all platforms. TV not only delivers large reach, but once again proves to be a particularly effective advertising medium. The results clearly show that we are on the right track with our cross-media marketing approaches."

The results

Advertising impact of moving image advertising depending on the medium

The study confirms the power of moving images in all channels, particularly in the indicators of advertising recall and spontaneous brand awareness. Advertising in traditional moving images (here TV and YouTube) has a stronger impact than in social media such as Facebook. For example, 18% of the test subjects were able to spontaneously recall advertising for brands that they had seen in a TV block, 14% remembered after seeing a pre-roll ad on YouTube. 7% were able to name advertised brands after seeing corresponding moving image advertising on Facebook. Within the YouTube formats tested, the bumper showed the highest advertising recall.

Advertising impact of moving image advertising depending on contact frequency and media combination

Test subjects remember brands twice as much if they have had double contact with an advertisement from the same medium. This applies to TV, YouTube and Facebook.

Combinations of different TV advertising formats achieve the strongest spontaneous advertising recall with values of over 40 percent.

It also shows that the advertising mix of TV and YouTube is more effective than two contacts with a campaign on YouTube alone. In addition, the mix of both media is almost as effective as two TV contacts in the advertising block. TV and YouTube can reinforce each other.

A combination of TV or YouTube with Facebook moving image advertising, on the other hand, achieves a weaker effect than two TV or two YouTube pre-roll contacts.

The study

For the study, around 3,700 test subjects aged 14 and over were invited to test studios in four German cities between March and June 2018. Here, they were each exposed to two moving image media on different end devices. The test subjects had to use TV and the video platform YouTube as well as the social media platform Facebook at least occasionally. This corresponds to around 40 percent of the German population aged 14 and over. After using the media, the test subjects were asked about the three advertised brands from different sectors.

The study design used is unique worldwide, as the test subjects were able to surf freely on the desktop as well as within the YouTube and Facebook app environment or move around within their own newsfeed. In addition, it was possible to control which selected advertising material was played and where.

The advertising impact analysis focused on testing different forms of advertising for three moving image campaigns from different brands and industries for TV, YouTube (browser and app) and the Facebook mobile newsfeed (app). The target ads were fed into the respective environments via "ad-injected content".