Creatives trumps ad placement and optimization

According to a recent study by Dynamic Logic the main problem with low performing online ads is not because of targeting or placements, it’s mostly because of the actual creatives. The Millward Brown company analyzed more than 170,000 online ads in their database and they discovered that the following factors weighed more in determining the success of a campaign: persistent branding, strong calls to action, and even human faces.

These three factors have a strong influence on the consumer for brand awareness, purchase intent, and ad recall. Here’s an excerpt from the article that you guys might find helpful in your next campaign:

Highlight the brand prominently throughout the ad. “Intrigue is rarely a good strategy in online campaigns,” the report says. Ads with omnipresent logos had the highest brand and online ad awareness.

Make each second count. Whether it’s brand awareness or a call to action, the ad should support the message at all times. The ad will probably only get one second with the user, so each one counts.

“Reveal” ads don’t work. Get right to the point, because you can’t expect the user to wait around and watch the ad in its entirety. While this applies to all industries, for CPG ads, 1 out of 20 top performers on ad awareness used the reveal format, while 17 out of 20 bottom performers did. Dynamic Logic does cite video and highly entertaining ads as sometimes being exceptions to this rule.

Stay simple. Dynamic Logic recommends using no more than two messages per execution. For example, copy-heavy ads for financial services advertisers tended to underperform on awareness.

Use people. People imagery was found to work especially well for financial services campaigns.

Source

Hope this article gave you guys some helpful insights. It definitely gave me a lot of things to think about.

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