Print Advertising Most Popular And Relevant Medium
Christina Goodman, head of global marketing and business development at Dynamic Logic, examines the findings of new research looking at consumers’ opinions of advertising…
Print advertising generates the most positive reaction with UK consumers and is seen as having the most relevance, according to Dynamic Logic’s latest AdReaction study, which gauges consumers’ opinions of advertising.
Newspaper and magazine ads top the chart with 53% of consumers considering them as “very” or “somewhat” positive.
Certainly, if asked, most people will never say they would like to have more advertising in their lives. However, the results show that there are certain types of advertising that people may be more receptive towards. When asked about their overall attitudes towards general advertising formats, consumers in the UK feel very differently about the various media platforms.
More interruptive or intrusive formats, such as telemarketing and spam (non-opt-in email) are towards the bottom of the list in terms of consumer appeal. Print advertising (newspapers and magazine) as well as TV and outdoor advertising rate most positively. What is surprising is the breadth of feelings about different advertising formats. This research shows there is a significant difference between how consumers feel about ads on mobile devices (70% negative) versus Newspaper ads (9% negative).
New formats included in the fifth-year survey were online search ads and ads on mobile devices. While initial research focused on measuring the effectiveness of ads on mobile WAP sites indicates that they can be highly effective among certain audiences, this research suggests that consumers may not yet perceive the value in mobile ads in general at this stage. Certainly, not all mobile advertising can be considered the same. SMS push messaging may be perceived to consumers as very different from banner ads appearing on WAP sites, so further research should be done to distinguish consumer’s perceptions even within the various types of mobile advertising as the medium matures.
What is no surprise is that mobile phones are considered extremely personal to the consumer and the perception may be that ads on mobile phones will be intrusive and interruptive – like spam, even more so than telemarketing and non-opt-in email. Therefore, there is an opportunity for advertisers and brands to change this perception by connecting with their audience when the message is relevant. It is also likely that many of the people have not yet seen mobile ads, so this perception may vary with exposure and experience.
Online search ads fall among the middle of the list, perhaps because search remains a relatively new ad format compared to newspaper and TV (where people are trained to expect advertising). Search ads – designed to be informative within an information-seeking environment – tend to strive for relevancy, thus one might expect for that reason alone to see search higher on the list of consumer preference.
Relevancy plays an important part in overall opinions of the ad formats. According to this research, the more relevant people feel the ads are to them, the better their opinions of the medium. newspaper, TV and magazine ads were found to be the most relevant, while ads on mobile devices, non-opt-in emails and telemarketing were least relevant. To an earlier point, it will be up to mobile advertisers to get creative in terms of technologies and methods to reach a more relevant audience. Surprisingly, even when ranking on relevance, online search ads placed in the middle of the list – perhaps because many consumers do not realise that some of the search results they see are in fact advertising.
Overall, online advertising has fallen slightly compared to its ranking in earlier AdReaction surveys. This may be in part because the internet still suffers from its history of the early days of online advertising, and people may still associate it with the annoyance of pop-ups and a cluttered media environment. According to this survey, people perceive that the amount of advertising on the web is increasing. Over two-thirds (71%) of UK respondents said that there are more ads on the Internet compared to the past six months. AdReaction results also reveal much variance in perceptions of online ads when people were asked specifically about formats, such as video and banner ads.
Dynamic Logic: 0207 152 4004 www.dynamiclogic.com