What Does Digital Advertising Need Most? Effectiveness Metrics from a Mobile Consumer Panel

Posted by MFour on Feb 28, 2019 8:00:00 AM

Digital is dominating the advertising industry, and ad effectiveness measurement with an all-mobile consumer panel gathered around a mobile market research app is the necessary solution for understanding how well $129 billion in projected 2019 spending is performing as brands try to influence smartphone-centric consumers.

eMarketer predicts 2019 will be the milestone year in which U.S. advertisers for the first time spend more on digital ads ($129 billion) than on television, radio and all other “traditional” advertising channels combined ($109 billion) as they seek to exert influence all along the purchase path. Mobile digital ads will account for $87 billion – 67% of all digital spending, and 36% of all ad-spend dollars across all channels.

It goes without saying that documenting the effectiveness of all those digital advertising dollars is a crucial job for market research. But that task has been deeply problematic, with standard  measurement methods unable to collect reliable metrics in the digital realm. With that in mind, MFour recently announced a comprehensive solution driven by feedback from validated digital ad recipients from the 2.5 million member, all-mobile U.S. consumer panel that uses the Surveys On The Go® mobile market research app.

As Chris St. Hilaire, MFour’s co-founder and CEO has framed it, “until now, digital ad measurement has been directional at best, focused on desktops rather than smartphones despite consumers' massive shift to mobile. Brands are shifting ad spend to mobile because they know that’s where consumers are. Digital Brand Studies don't just guess. They provide accurate, validated metrics. Measuring ad effectiveness doesn’t have to be like reading tea leaves any more.”

For more on Digital Brand Studies, just click here.

 

Topics: mobile market research, digital advertising, mobile consumer panel, Digital Brand Studies, market research panel

MFour Introduces Digital Brand Studies

Posted by Mike Boehm, MFour on Jan 15, 2019 6:17:37 PM

 Digital Brand Studies

MFour Introduces Digital Brand Studies for Validated, Non-Inferred Advertising Metrics

Finally, a Mobile-First Digital Ad Measurement Solution Built for the Smartphone Era

Irvine, CA: MFour Mobile Research, the recognized leader in GPS survey technology and consumer data, introduces Digital Brand Studies, bringing a much-needed mobile-first approach to ad-effectiveness measurement for digital advertising.

Mobile advertising now accounts for 70% of all digital spending, per eMarketer. Digital Brand Studies obtain fast survey feedback from actual, exposed mobile consumers, enabling brands and agencies to assess lift, awareness and intent to buy using deterministic data, not probabilistic modeling.

The difference-maker is MFour’s carefully-profiled, first-party consumer panel – 2.5 million U.S. consumers who use the Surveys On The Go® mobile research app. They provide reliable representation of key mobile audiences digital advertising campaigns need to reach, including Millennials, GenZ, Hispanics and African-Americans.

“Until now, digital ad measurement has been directional at best, focused on desktops rather than smartphones despite consumers' massive shift to mobile,” said Chris St. Hilaire, MFour’s co-founder and CEO. “Brands are shifting ad spend to mobile because they know that’s where consumers are. Digital Brand Studies don't just guess. They provide accurate, validated metrics. Measuring ad effectiveness doesn’t have to be like reading tea leaves anymore.”

Here’s what users of Digital Brand Studies can expect:

  • MFour’s all-mobile panel and cross-platform approach registers mobile ad exposures and desktop exposures.
  • Interview two demographically matched audiences of at least 100 consumers each: an exposed test group and an unexposed control group.
  • Real-time reporting enables in-flight optimizations of ad campaigns.

(more)

  • Choose a turnkey solution that includes impact analysis, or a custom solution for more in-depth analysis and attribution.

 Digital Brand Studies cost $5,000 for the standard option and $12,000 for a Plus option adding crosstabs, data analysis and custom attribution metrics. To learn more, contact solutions@mfour.com.

Topics: digital advertising, mobile solutions, mobile consumers

Were Advertising ROI Metrics Better in 2000 BC than They Are Today?

Posted by MFour on Jul 26, 2018 7:00:00 AM

 Ancient Pottery Blog 25July18

Trying to measure advertising ROI occupies the workdays (and perhaps some sleepless nights) of Chief Marketing Officers, brand managers and consumer insights specialists the world over. The problem is that advertising ROI as it’s commonly measured might as well stand for Really Only Inferences. In the absence of real data from real consumers, measurement quickly becomes supposition.

Things were so much better 4,000 years ago. That’s when the first marketers began branding products and measuring the impact on sales. And they had the benefit of using real data from real consumers to measure the return on their branding efforts.

According to scholarship published in the Journal of Macromarketing, if a friend invited you over to dinner during the Shang Dynasty in China (2000-1500 BC), chances are you’d be served from pottery marked with symbols unique to its maker, who was also its marketer. And if you admired your host’s serving bowls, the symbol on them would surely catch your eye and prompt you to ask who made them. And that would be the first step toward product awareness, intent to purchase, and, eventually, to a sale. The maker’s investment of time and effort in festooning bowls with branding symbols would have earned a nice return.

That ancient Chinese potter had a huge advantage over many 21st Century marketing, advertising and consumer insights professionals when it came to understanding ROI. The potter could engage each actual buyer in person, and understand exactly what motivated each purchase. 

Now the direct connection to feedback from actual consumers largely has vanished. In attempting to measure ROI for Out of Home advertising, for example, today’s marketing and insights professionals are forced to fall back on inferences from data that may be tangential or even irrelevant to the actual purchase.

For example, one common but flawed method for measuring ROI is to make estimates based on raw traffic counts. The assumption is that people who passed by a highway billboard or another form of OOH advertising were in fact aware of the sign, the brand and the product. And that the sign played a significant part in driving them to shop and buy. That’s a lot to assume.

Another method, more grounded in today’s technology, uses mobile geolocation to determine that a particular consumer’s smartphone (and therefore its owner) passed in view of a sign, and subsequently was geolocated at a store carrying the advertised product. Third-party data such as apps detected on that consumer’s smartphone also might enter the mix as another input for spitting out inferred ROI metrics. Still, what’s missing from that algorithmic equation is the reality obtainable only from known and validated consumers. 

Here’s what’s often assumed or inferred in today’s standard methods for estimating advertising ROI:

  • That an OOH ad helped cause a store visit, rather than merely correlating with it.
  • That knowing which apps a consumer has downloaded is sufficient for making accurate inferences about who that consumer is. For example, whether he or she is a he or a she, and belongs to a consumer segment the OOH campaign is meant to target.
  • That an upswing in sales of the advertised product during or just after the campaign is by itself a trustworthy indicator that the campaign was a key driver of the added revenue.
  • For example, a sunblock brand may fly off the shelves during an OOH campaign, but the real driver could be a heatwave, rather than the advertising.

So what should marketers and researchers do to recapture the advantages Chinese artisans of 2000 BC enjoyed when it came to getting real marketing and advertising ROI metrics from real people?

The answer begins with identifying and surveying real consumers who’ve had validated exposure to an OOH campaign. As for the rest, it will cost you a click to find out – so just click here.

Topics: market research, consumer insights, ad measurement, digital advertising, out of home advertising

MFour Joins DPAA, the Leadership Hub of the Digital OOH Industry

Posted by MFour on Jul 3, 2018 7:00:00 AM

Blog DPAA logo 

MFour is delighted to be the newest member of DPAA (Digital Place Based Advertising Association), a global organization that provides leadership for the Digital Out of Home industry, serving as a nexus for information, marketing, and connections and collaborations. 

"MFour…is at the heart of why advertising on digital out-of-home media is growing so rapidly,” said Barry Frey, DPAA President and CEO.

“What we can do is extremely helpful to digital out-of-home advertisers and others in the OOH space,” added Chris St. Hilaire, MFour’s CEO and co-founder. “We are honored to be joining DPAA, and look forward to sharing what we’ve learned with our fellow members.”

To read the DPAA’s full announcement, click here.MFour enables OOH advertisers to observe opted-in consumers’ location journeys in real time, then survey them soon after an ad exposure or after any other relevant experience. To set up a live demo, just get in touch by clicking here.

Topics: market research, consumer insights, advertising research, OOH, ad measurement, digital advertising, out of home advertising

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