528_milward_kantar_paper_tv-roi_0711

Millward Brown & Kantar Media • 11 Madison Avenue • 12th Floor • New York, NY• 10010

Measuring Acceptance and Avoidance of TV Advertising to Maximize ROI

July 2011

Millward Brown:

Helen Fearn, Director Global Innovations

Mitzi Lorentzen, VP Client Solutions, Communications Development Research

Kantar Media Audiences:

Jeff Boehme, Chief Research Officer

Alex North, Product Manager: RapidView

2011 Millward Brown & Kantar MediaMeasuring Acceptance and Avoidance of TV Advertising to Maximize ROI 2

THE NEW TV REALITY

Technology is helping define a new reality in television. Digital technologies are empowering consumers with the greatest

choice of content, in the highest quality, delivered when and where it is most convenient: welcome to the consumer age of

television.

This means that advertisers have to embrace new methods of reaching consumers with their message. The new reality

presents two critical issues:

• Consumers are more actively multi-tasking on multiple devices – and the risk is potential lost audiences and ad

avoidance

• Traditional measurement is challenged to evaluate this environment with consistent metrics

This evolution comes with great opportunity. Digital advancements are enabling more efficient targeting capabilities and digital

devices “communicate” with a higher fidelity of data; return path data. This means greater opportunity to “mine & combine”

information so marketers can understand this new digital media landscape and improve their advertising effectiveness.

As the media industry is demanding greater TV efficiency, effectiveness and accountability, the importance of commercial

avoidance and subsequent loss in advertising revenue is becoming a growing concern among advertisers. Millward Brown and

Kantar Media have combined two key databases to help customers understand audience tuneaway behavior and therefore

minimize ad avoidance.

THE IMPORTANCE OF ‘TUNEAWAY’

Tuneaway is a measure of lost audience derived from

tuning records based on Return Path Data (RPD). RPD is

any usage data returned to a platform company (Satellite,

cable MSO or telephone provider) from a digital device. For

TV, this could be from a set-top box, IPTV, connected TV,

Internet, mobile, etc. – anything that is used to deliver TV

content digitally.

These second-by-second tuning levels enable us to

passively collect and measure audiences to channels and

programs, as well as commercials. Tuneaway analyzes the

audience present at the start of an individual commercial

and calculates the proportion of lost tuning seconds as a

result of audiences tuning away from the commercial.

As ad avoidance to specific campaigns can be high,

understanding this behavior is critical to assessing the

real value of the advertising investment. From our studies,

we have determined that many factors can influence ad

avoidance. The creative itself is a key driver, and Millward

Brown provides many clients with critical assessments

on the potential of specific ads. From the Kantar Media

perspective, tuning behavior measures the “environment”

of how an ad is received. The majority of TV tuning is still

live-only. We have seen that audience tuneaway averages

about 3%. However, this ranges and we have seen

campaigns where audience tuneaway can exceed 20%.

As a practical example, sponsors of the Super Bowl would

lose approximately $80,000 of their investment dollars

assuming an average of 3% audience tuneaway.

HOW OUR COMPANIES PARTNERED TO MEASURE TUNEAWAY

The Kantar Media and Millward Brown partnership was

conceived to determine how we can help our clients

maximize their advertising effectiveness by minimizing

audience tuneaway. By aligning two separate databases,

Millward Brown’s robust database of Link™ copy testing and

Kantar Media’s DIRECTView actual audience behavior, we

can for the first time isolate the various factors which drive

audiences away from content.


Millward Brown’s Link identifies the potential effectiveness

of an ad and is validated to sales. The Link database

contains thousands of ads across a range of categories

and brands. DIRECTView is a managed RPD panel of over

100,000 digital households, representative of DIRECTV’s

national footprint of over 17.5m subscribing households.

(See figure 1)

Our analysis focused on a given month of Kantar Media’s

second-by-second TV tuning for 184 ads that had been

pre-tested via Millward Brown Link across a range of

categories. Our goal was to address two questions:

• what creative metrics from a pre-test can predict

audience tuneaway

• how media placement and measurable influences can

impact the results

Aligning these databases enables us to provide guidance

on how to optimize both creative and media placement to

minimize commercial tuneaway and maximize advertising

return on investment.

UNDERSTANDING THE CREATIVE

Understanding which creative elements relate to tuneaway

will provide an early warning signal to help advertisers

minimize ad avoidance from a content perspective and

provide insight that is actionable before the commercial is

aired.

It is important to note that tuneaway provides an

understanding of ad avoidance, but does not indicate

whether an ad will be successful if watched or “tuned”.

Millward Brown’s research on what constitutes strong

creative illustrates the importance of engaging viewers in

a branded fashion (branded engagement) so an ad gets

noticed and recalled in association with the brand. If an ad

engages viewers, the advertiser has a greater opportunity

to create associations about the brand that could generate

a response (persuasion). Combined, branded engagement

and persuasion help us understand the creative potential of

a commercial in market.

Even though TV is a passively consumed media (See Figure

2), we know that some ads are more likely to engage

with consumers in a negative way and be fast forwarded

or ‘tuned away’ from, and these contain certain creative

characteristics.

From analyses that we have completed across the two

datasets we know there are a number of creative aspects

that relate to tuneaway which can be grouped together into

three clear dimensions, as indicated in Figure 3.

Firstly viewers need to have a strong negative reaction to a

commercial in order to actively change the channel and

tune away. They find the commercial ‘unpleasant’, dislike it,

or feel inadequate or annoyed when watching it. The key

finding being, consumers have to engage with the

commercial in the first place, in order to take action

against it.

Figure 2

Figure 1


Personal relevance also plays an important part, if

consumers have no interest in the category or brand, they

are more likely to tune away. This corresponds with how we

know brains process information.1 We know that the brain

prioritizes information of relevance to current or future

goals and emotion is a big cue to the brain of something

that is relevant and important.

Finally, if the message contained in the ad lacks relevance

or credibility for consumers, then they are also more likely

to tune away.

Therefore, from a creative standpoint, the advertising idea

has to resonate with consumers and tap into issues of

importance to them. The challenge is to talk about the

brand in a way that is relevant to the consumer’s current

mindset or broader values and goals to help minimize

potential tuneaway.

UNDERSTANDING MEDIA PLACEMENT

The effectiveness of an ad depends largely on where

and how that commercial is received, or its media

“environment”. Media placement can be measured on a

range of factors, or media influences, relating to the buying

strategy employed.

1. Cognitive Neuroscience, Marketing and Research: Separating Fact from Fiction, Graham Page and Jane Raymond ESOMAR Congress 2006

For the purposes of this analysis, we used RPD to identify

7 measurable media influences to determine which are the

most prominent in gauging audiences tuning away from the

commercials. These include; program, network/channel,

daypart, commercial length, the pod within the program,

position in pod and product category (see figure 4).

Broad analysis of the tuning behavior to all commercials

has helped us to identify some key trends. For example,

ads which are shown first in pod tend to have higher levels

of tuneaway. Program also affects the ad’s performance

with respect to tuneaway, as does the product category

being advertised. For example, some categories, such as

Entertainment, experience lower levels whereas others,

such as Automotive, experience higher levels of channel

switching.

We have used these data to develop a new performance

metric – the Audience Tuneaway Index (ATI). All of the

media influences listed above impact on the performance

of campaigns, and so by using broad commercial

benchmarks we can control for each influence and

calculate how campaigns would perform in an average

media environment.

We have included ATI in our study of tuneaway, calculating

benchmarks for each of the seven media influences and

applying them to the spots that ran in our 184 campaigns,

to understand the impact that the media placement had on

each one.

Figure 3

Figure 4


THE REAL VALUE – COMBINING CREATIVE AND MEDIA PLACEMENT RESULTS

Although analyzing creative and media results separately

provides useful and interesting insights, the real power lies

in combining media and creative aspects to understand

how they interact to explain tuneaway.

Following the analyses that were conducted on each

individual set of data, we built a structural equation model

across the combined datasets to isolate and dimensionalize

the effects of creative and media placement on tuneaway.

While we know creative has a critical impact, the structural

equation model demonstrates that media plays an even

stronger role, accounting for 75% of tuneaway.

(See figure 5).

This can be explained by typical TV tuning behavior. As we

have seen, from a creative standpoint viewers generally

have to really dislike an ad or have it not be relevant to

actively change the channel. From a media standpoint

though, there are multiple factors which will impact even

the most powerful creative. Many consumers will intuitively

change the channel as soon as the commercial break

starts, and certain programming is better at retaining

audiences. For example, news or sports may impact the

way in which the commercials within it are consumed,

compared to a genre such as drama which usually requires

continuous engagement to follow a storyline through a

commercial pod.

Despite the media placement, the value of the creative

remains critical. Audience tuneaway does not inform us

if the commercial was remembered in conjunction with

the brand, or whether it drove sales. As such, tuneaway

analyses complement other commercial performance

measures and provide an additional diagnostic to

understand if an ad has the potential to be tuned away and

can be further optimized.

ACTIVATING THE MODEL TO HELP ADVERTISERS

The meta-analysis we conducted on the structural equation

model enables us to understand the overall trends and

causes of audience tuneaway. However, we are also able

to analyze the performance of individual campaigns and

pinpoint areas of strength and weakness. This can help in

understanding whether certain types of creative are more

likely to drive higher levels of tuneaway and identifying

warning signs to look out for before a commercial is aired.

We have analyzed a mixture of campaigns to demonstrate

the merits of our integrated creative/media approach. We

found examples of campaigns which scored well creatively

in Link but performed poorly in terms of their tuneaway,

and others which were weaker creatively but managed to

minimize ad avoidance. Examples such as these enable

us to understand, in more detail, the relationship between

creative and media and to identify specific elements

that contributed to this performance. This illustrates

how advertisers can use the measurement tools to

help minimize tuneaway at both the creative and media

placement stages.

CASE STUDY 1 – STRONG CREATIVE

The first two campaigns we investigated were from the

Electronic Goods category and were both creatively strong,

with good sales potential. They were personally relevant

to consumers, considered to contain both relevant and

credible messages and elicited a low negative emotional

reaction. We expected both ads to have low levels of tune

Figure 5


away. However, while the first of these ads went on to score

as expected in market, the second had some issues with

media placement resulting in higher tuneaway.

(See Figure 6)

The Average Tuneaway Indices show us how the ads would

have fared in a completely average media environment, by

controlling for the various media influences like channel,

position in break, etc.. In this case both ads achieved similar

scores, indicating that there must have been a media effect

causing the difference in the actual levels of tuneaway

achieved. We found that the programs and channels

selected for campaigns B were more likely to be tuned

away.

For this case, Link assessed the overall effectiveness of

the commercials at the pre-test stage and with this new

learning we ascertained that there were no issues with the

creative in terms of potential tuneaway. RPD demonstrated

that even with strong creative, media placement plays a

critical role in terms of retaining an audience.

CASE STUDY 2 – WEAKER CREATIVE

The third and fourth campaigns we evaluated gave us the

opposite perspective. Both of these were weaker ads from

a creative viewpoint, with a lower likelihood of a potential

sales effect and a higher tuneaway potential. Levels of

personal relevance were low, they both created a strong

negative emotional reaction and the message that they

portrayed was either low in terms of relevance or credibility.

Although Campaign C saw higher levels of ad avoidance,

as expected, Campaign D went on to achieve low levels of

tuneaway, despite its creative weakness.

When we investigated the media placement findings we

noticed that for Campaign C, in addition to issues with its

creative, the media placement drove significantly higher

tuneaway when compared with all other ads in the category

(see Figure 7). So, in effect, two negative aspects affected

the ad – the creative and media.

For Campaign D, while there were issues with the creative,

the media placement strategy for this brand was much

better. Most programming chosen performed well, as did

the first-in-pod spots which were focused in breakfast

content as opposed to primetime. While this was not a

stronger ad creatively, media placement clearly helped

compensate for performance and minimized tuneaway.

The ATI calculation supports this finding, with both ads

again achieving similar scores when we control for the

various media influences, suggesting that if they had both

been placed in a completely average media environment

they would have seen a similar performance. As it happens,

the media chosen by each brand caused the differences in

tuneaway that were observed.

These final two ads demonstrate that there was an

opportunity to improve both creative executions before they

launched to minimize tuneaway. They also reinforce how

RPD can help optimize future media placement plans.

Figure 6

Figure 7


with Kantar Media’s Return Path Data, offering insight to

optimize future media placement to reduce tuneaway.

Ultimately, our measurement helps to maximize advertising

Return on Investment.

AUTHORS

Millward Brown:

Helen Fearn, Director Global Innovations

Mitzi Lorentzen, VP Client Solutions, Communications

Development Research

Kantar Media Audiences:

Jeff Boehme, Chief Research Officer

Alex North, Product Manager: RapidView

OVERALL CONCLUSIONS

Consumers will continue to evolve with digital media,

actively selecting relevant video content and consuming it

on their own terms. To understand audiences in this digital

evolution, programmers and advertisers need additional

measurement practices to provide enhanced accountability

and insight. Commercial tuneaway does represent a

significant loss in both audience and media investment, but

there are metrics available that can help analyze campaigns

from both a creative and a media placement standpoint, to

manage and reduce ad avoidance.

Millward Brown and Kantar Media have developed an

enhanced commercial measurement technique to evaluate

the effect of tuneaway and help in minimizing it. Early

warning signs identified at the creative stage via Link give

the opportunity to modify the creative and help reduce

potential tuneaway. Media placement can be assessed

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