New research from Newsworks and GroupM UK reveals that quality online environments – where consumers have a deeper relationship with the brand, such as news brand publishers or sport sites – are 42% more cost effective for advertisers.
The news follows the unveiling of ‘The Ozone Project’ two weeks ago, with News UK, the Telegraph and the Guardian putting on a rare display of unity by offering joint digital ad sales.
Newsworks, the marketing body for news brands, is now keen to highlight the superiority of quality online environments to advertisers.
According to the study, digital ads on premium websites are 58% more likely to be 100% in view for at least five seconds. The online industry standard for ad viewability is 50% in view for one second.
Meanwhile, GroupM UK reports that 48% of measurable ads on the open exchange were never actually seen.
Ads in quality digital environments are 98% more likely to be placed fully above the fold, and 273% more likely to prompt a hover from a user.
Furthermore, response rates were high across the board for premium placements, with average uplifts of +10.5% for brand awareness, +19.2% for ad recall, +9.7% for brand perception and +10.3% for recommendation intent.
According to Newsworks CEO Vanessa Clifford and GroupM UK’s MD of digital trading Robin O’Neill, the study provides definitive proof that when it comes to digital advertising, not all environments are equal.
“Now we have the insight to differentiate the value of high-quality placements – such as on a newsbrand website – from general free browsing,” said Clifford.
“This marks a huge step in our ongoing effectiveness programme and, working with GroupM, our aim is to make this work as an actionable part of the online buying process for advertisers.”
The scale of the study is on par with industry surveys such as TGI; GroupM UK analysed the ad environments of 84 live digital campaigns from September 2017 to June 2018, covering over 398 million impressions and nearly 30,000 filtered survey responses.
