How spectacular advertising can hijack the algorithm
Opinion
Lumen’s Mike Follett shares insights from its recent research with Global Street Art on how strong creative can earn more attention.
Advertising is not show business. But it is at the show end of business. Our job is to earn enough attention for our clients such that their target audience remembers and desires their product, within given budget and time constraints.
But the way we do that is by putting on a show.
Making a hit show is a risky business. In Hollywood, Sam Goldman, the Oscar-winning screenwriter, noted “no one knows anything”. At least in advertising we know that only half our budgets are wasted (even if we don’t know which half).
So it’s natural that we have taken steps to de-risk the industry. In the last couple of decades, we have invested more and more resources into understanding the minutiae of advertising: what is viewable, what is viewed, what is remembered, what is acted upon.
This hasn’t just been out of lily-livered cowardice. Better data gives us better insight into how advertising actually works. Instead of merely measuring the delivery or impact of advertising, we are building models of the mechanism of marketing.
How many ads does someone need to see to drive a sale? How much attention must be generated to form a memory? Per impression or in aggregate? Amongst which audience? For which category? Over what time period?
This understanding has been reified within algorithms of stupefying precision. All the big platforms tout AI models that ingest incomprehensible amounts of data to optimise reach and frequency to drive business outcomes. Who amongst us hasn’t sat through a pitch that includes the phrase ‘we no longer know how it works, but it works’? In the algorithm we trust.
But while advertising agencies are in business, we remain at the show end. And we risk missing the big opportunities by focusing on de-risking the small stuff.
Attention mural advertising
This is why Global Street Art’s new study of attention mural ads is so interesting.
Lumen Research worked with GSA to understand how much attention the massive murals it creates generate. And guess what? A lot. They are effectively unmissable and generate as much attention as a full-screen video, despite being the very definition of static media.
So far, so obvious. But what’s fascinating is how these interesting ads get amplified by their own audience.
We found that a typical GSA installation generated around 13.1m seconds of attention over four weeks. In addition, we found that another 3.8m seconds of attention were generated on social media by people sharing videos of the mural being installed or images of the mural in situ. This increased the campaign’s aggregate attention by an additional 29%. For free.
Because the media is iconic and the creative is beautiful, people voluntarily took pictures of the installation and shared them with their friends. Instead of ‘consuming’ the ad, the audience began ‘producing’ or ‘distributing’ their own versions. You need to see this. Literally.
Good marketers ask how much attention a given medium is worth. Great marketers ask if a creative execution is attention-worthy. We can all feed attention data into our planning and buying algorithms to make sure that we are getting our fair share of attention. But how can we combine media and creative to get an unfair share of attention?
In creative reviews, Nils Leonard, of Uncommon fame, often asks: “Is this something that people are going to get their phone out and take a picture of?” Before I saw the GSA data, I thought this was an unrealistic ambition for advertising.
But perhaps I wasn’t being ambitious – or realistic – enough. A great ad in a great location can generate a great deal more attention than the norm – and an astonishing additional halo of attention on social media. If you trust the algorithmic approach to advertising, you will leave money on the table.
And this suggests a new remuneration model for those of us at the show end of business. Perhaps brands should pay creative agencies for generating ‘excess attention’ over and above the normal levels for a media. This would be a quantifiable, objective measure of the contribution of the creative as distinct from the media, tailor-made for the business end of a conversation with procurement.
Mike Follett is the founder and CEO of Lumen Research.