The most overused word in the adtech jungle

The overuse of the ‘premium’ label in advertising is rendering the word meaningless. It’s time for a clear definition, writes Inskin Media’s Sebastian Schindler

During my annual dmexco exploration tour last week, I noticed one of the not-so-heavily discussed trends of this year’s flagship event in Cologne: it has become close to impossible to get your hands on non-“premium” inventory these days.

You might beg to differ, as the selection bias naturally separates the wheat from the dodgy environments in which ads continue to be placed – the murkiest of the murky tend to prefer to remain in the dark (parts of the virtual world of programmatic that is) rather than present themselves at trade fairs.

Premium is a beloved and heavily overused term in our industry; a shiny chassis of pseudo-quality often supported by a dirty diesel engine running on little more than buzzwords. The question of the overuse of the premium label rendering it meaningless is an interesting one.

One of the reasons that so many (all?) vendors can claim ‘premiumness’ (and get away with it) is because of the lack of a clear definition. The debate of what constitutes premiumness in an advertising environment is probably as old as the attempted definitions (and subsequent disagreements) are manifold. Factors such as audience, formats and delivery efficiency / hygiene (viewability, IVT, etc.) get happily thrown into the premium mix, put on posters or printed into the chocolate topping of your vendor-sponsored skinny cappuccino (yes, that’s dmexco).

Each one clamours to claim its role in justifying a premium price, combining the right person with the right communication vehicle and the right way of doing it. And while all of these individual factors contribute to a campaign’s success, they dilute the conversation of what makes the right environment, the very media context in which an ad is placed, so valuable to advertisers.

But which boxes, then, does a media environment have to tick in order to be considered premium?

The premium price for advertising in certain environments is justified via its ability to deliver enhanced brand building effects. Therefore, truly premium environments need to demonstrate a quantifiable, incremental positive impact on the ad’s effectiveness in comparison to non-premium or less-premium sites.

In the end, it is these effects that will enhance consumers’ purchase propensity in the long run, which is the very objective of brand advertising.

Many studies have tested the effect of premium environments on the perception of advertising. While levels of methodological soundness strongly vary, some empirical generalisations can be drawn: ads placed in premium environments benefit from a ‘halo effect’, that is to say the premium impression of the environment positively influences perception of the advertised brand.

This has been observed in regard to traditional brand metrics, attribute associations, memory-encoding and online browsing behaviour. The challenge present in most of these studies is this: when environments are selected on the basis of the researcher’s perception of premiumness, then the factors driving the observed effects can be difficult to pinpoint.

Here’s an example: let’s say I’m trying to prove the halo effects of premium sites vs non-premium sites, choosing The Independent and Breitbart News as examples, respectively. I might investigate an ad placement’s effectiveness in both environments, and find that the placement on The Independent performs better on brand metric lifts than its non-premium equivalent.

Having defined The Independent as premium, I am now tempted to conclude that premium environments make ads go further. However, it remains unclear which of The Independent’s attributes contributed to these lifts. This means that we haven’t clarified what makes The Independent “premium” in the first place. This issue is present in many studies, both academic and commercial.

When I first mentioned premium environments here, I bet the attributes that came to your mind were along the lines of “heritage”, “trustworthiness”, “reliability”, “journalistic integrity”, “quality content”. Some of these publisher attributes might positively influence the perception of an ad placed in these environments.

However more needs to be done to really understand exactly which attributes drive incremental ad effectiveness, the underlying cognitive processes responsible for this phenomenon, and accordingly, which environments can really claim the readily bandied about premium label.

The use of the term “premiumness” should come with a sense of accountability. Claiming it is not sufficient: publishers / media sellers must prove their point using empirical evidence.

Thinking about it again, maybe the reason why I couldn’t find non-premium media vendors at dmexco was because dmexco itself is a premium environment. At least, that’s what they are striving to be – note the introduction of the €99 ticket clearing the hallways of students and junior professionals.

Exhibiting (shall we say advertising?) there certainly contributed to an exhibitor’s brand building. Even if the newly built associations did, in some cases, not really stretch beyond some coffee topping gimmicks. But that’s a whole different story, isn’t it?

Sebastian Schindler is Global Insight Lead, Inskin Media and a sponsor of Mediatel’s dmexco coverage for 2017.