The better your mood, the more receptive you are to advertising messages

Germans are 21 percent more likely to click on native videos if they are in a positive mood. The reason for this is that emotions have a significant influence on the willingness to accept different forms of advertising.

Emotions are often responsible for people's actions: Germans' moods also play a key role in the success of advertising. The new Yahoo study shows: Digital advertising is also 40 percent more effective on average in the U.S. and U.K. if it reflects a user's positive mood.

Content marketing and native video work best

When the mood is positive, German users prefer the advertising formats content marketing and native videos. The click rate here increased by 21 percent in each case. Direct marketing was less successful despite the good mood, with four percent. The participants from the U.S., the U.K. and Canada were different: almost half of the British are particularly receptive to direct marketing (47 percent) when they are just open to it. Both U.S. and Canadian respondents are inclined to seamlessly integrated native ads if they match the user's mood. Native videos are particularly popular: The click rate for this form of advertising is 30 percent higher among motivated people than among those with less motivation.

German users are optimistic

If users are more receptive to advertising when they are in a positive mood, the question remains as to how often and when this applies to them in order to play out the formats as effectively as possible. In fact, the study comes to the conclusion that the mood barometer of users is dominated by the mood "optimistic to euphoric" throughout the day. Almost half of the Germans surveyed (48 percent) are mostly optimistic while using their smartphone. This figure is even higher than the average compared to participants in other countries. In addition to 'optimistic,' respondents could opt for many other emotions such as "calm," "restless" and "depressed."

As for the time of day, the mood among users from Germany is best between 11 am and 5 pm. That's when they're full of energy, organizing their day or looking for inspiration - and are more likely to be guided by advertising. That doesn't mean that advertising in other moods misses its target. But less optimistic moods are a significantly greater challenge for advertisers.

"We have suspected for some time that users with a positive attitude are more receptive to advertising. But it wasn't until this study that we found out just how much emotions actually influence the success of a campaign," says Eva Herzog, Head of Research at Yahoo Germany. "Advertisers should therefore use this knowledge in the future to play out their advertising more precisely."

Study summarizes 18,000 mood touchpoints and many answers

The "Receptivity of Emotions" study was conducted in Germany, the UK, Canada and the USA and involved several survey stages: 600 users between the ages of 16 and 54 in the USA and the UK used an app specially developed for the study for one week. For each smartphone use, the app asked about the reason for use, the content used and the user's mood. Yale University developed the method for measuring emotions. In this way, 18,000 mood touchpoints could be evaluated. The integration of different advertising formats helped to determine which advertising works best with which emotion. Further results were provided by in-depth interviews as well as a 15-minute online survey among 4,000 participants in all countries. The study was conducted in the period October to December 2016.