New Research – The Effectiveness of Colour v Black/White Advertising
The Media Research Group’s latest evening meeting, held last week, heard Jim Chisholm present his research for the Newspaper Society on the effectiveness of colour v black/white advertising; the Newspaper Society Colour Project.
The objectives of the research were:
- to improve understanding of colour
- to quantify the level of benefit of including colour
- to identify active elements
- to measure advertising effectiveness
The research was carried out in two centres, Bristol and Northampton. These were chosen deliberately for their differences; in printing as well as culturally. Northampton uses a very advanced printing process, whereas Bristol does not. 24 ads were selected in each location, and then 6 dummy papers were produced, each containing 16 ads in colour and black and white. The ads used were real local ads.
Respondents read the dummy papers, and were then asked a series of questions:
- general recall of anything
- unprompted ad content recall
- unprompted advertiser recall
- prompted content recall (the prompted questions included all 24 ads although any one respondent only saw 16; this was to allow for over-keen respondents remembering things they did not see)
Results showed that for unprompted content recall, the responses were low; for unprompted advertisers they were slightly higher. When asked if they had seen a specific ad, the response grows even further. For one particular local ad, for Bryan Brothers garage, the prompted recall for the colour ad was 35%, for the mono it was 25%. However, depending on the ad design, some mono ads were more effective. Qualitative questions such as “Appeals to people like me” were also asked.
Another part of the research was eye movement tests; these were carried out by the Microcentre at Dundee University; a laser tracks the movement of the eye and measures what it is looking at. This test showed that an average of 38 seconds was spent on each page – 2.2% of all fixations on a page were on ads, and 0.62% of time was spent on ads. One thing discovered by the test was that respondents recall ads that apparently they have not looked at, leading to the conclusion that readers notice advertising in their peripheral vision. Readers tend to form a map of the page and then prioritize their reading objectives, with the eye jumping around the page.
A separate study relating to ad reading behaviour showed that recall for ads in the middle of the paper was higher, whether in Bristol or Nottingham; conversely recall of editorial was lowest in the middle; the stronger the editorial, the weaker the ads seemed to be. This challenges the conventional wisdom of paying premiums for front positions.
Conclusions of the research:
Size was not a factor in recall, and only if ads are well designed does colour add to them. An extra factor in recall is if the brand is famous already, but this is helped by strong images and good design in the ads.
“Colour isn’t a panacea,” said Jim Chisholm, “There were very big advertisers whose ads worked well in black and white. The issue is what it is about these ads that prompts such recall.” He went on to say that when you see the ads that work well you can see why; they are good clearly designed ads.
Questions
Mike Goodman of Abbott Mead Vickers pointed out that the results were based on tabloid papers, what about broadsheets? The reply was that the eye movement test does not cover a big enough area to be able to cope with broadsheets.
Millward Brown confirmed that their own research backed up the claim that the difference between black and white and colour ads becomes irrelevant if the ad is good enough. Neil Shepherd Smith pointed out that the effects of frequency have not been taken into account in this research.
In response to worried questions over actual time spent reading ads, Jim pointed out this was an average; some spent more time, others less. You need to persuade someone to actually read the ad they have glimpsed in their peripheral vision.
Jim Chisholm, NS: 0171 636 7014