Peter talks to TheNextGag about whether celebrities are valuable in commercials or not, what he thought of the latest edition of the Super Bowl ads and what spots of the year 2016 are making an impact.
Peter Daboll is the CEO of Ace Metrix in the USA.
He is author of the best-selling book “Ad:itude.” Ad-itude discusses how using data effectively throughout every stage of the creative process produces ads that consumers choose to view from beginning to end, rather than ignore. Daboll draws from his 25 years of experience in the science and business of advertising, exploring lessons learned throughout advertising history to present day, identifying obsolete rules that wrongly guide many marketers, while warning against modern-day modeling pitfalls.
THENEXTGAG: HOW DID ACE METRIX COME TO LIFE ?
PETER DABOLL: My background is in the science and business of advertising effectiveness. I was one of the early players at ComScore and then Yahoo. When I left Yahoo , where I ran a global insights team, I was looking for what to do next and realized that there hadn’t been too much innovation around the TV space and saw it was a big opportunity. I started Ace Metrix to do what I thought was a difficult challenge — to really measure the quality of ad creatives. And we started the company with that vision back in 2009. It really caught on in TV and now it’s, of course, all digital videos. But it was really focused on that specific idea that quality matters and it’s hard to measure, but if you do measure it, you are going to have happier advertisers and happier viewers. So, that’s really how we started it.
TNG: I WASN’T AWARE THAT YOU WERE NOW ALSO TRACKING DIGITAL ADS.
PD: Only video though. We don’t do display. But we do all digital video and television. Because, really, it’s just creative, right? Now, they are just points of distribution. But really understanding how good the creative is and if an ad is effective is our mission.
TNG: YOU TRACK EVERY NATIONAL TV ADS, RIGHT ? EVEN THE ONES THAT YOU WEREN’T PAID TO ANALYZE ?
PD: Exactly. This is one of the things that sets us apart. We are a syndicated service and test every ad. So, you not only see how your own ad performs, but you also see other category ads to compare performance. We offer brands an opportunity to understand the competitive landscape.
TNG: HOW DO YOU DO TO ANALYSE DIGITAL ADS ? CAN YOU TRACK EVERYTHING ?
PD: We try to track everything. We say “We test what matters”. There is a lot of content out there. And so, we really work with brands to assess what’s on their site, what’s on their YouTube channel, what they are running. We pick up what’s running on video networks. We probably test around 90+ percent of it all and are able to get a good representation of what the brand identity is, what videos are airing and which are getting traction. It’s been a really exciting part, because there hasn’t been a solution to really consistently measure the quality of an ad across television versus digital. And now, you can. We also see many brands just pumping out their own content now, creating their own videos. And they really had no way to test them.
TNG: YOU RELEASED A REPORT ON THE SUPERBOWL ADS FROM 2011 TO 2015. DO YOU FIND THAT THE LEVEL OF THE ADS IS INCREASING OR NOT ?
PD: Do I think the quality of the SuperBowl ads improved ? Not really. This year was kind of an off-year, I thought. Part of it was that in prior years we saw longer ads that were 60 or even 90 seconds long, and I think longer ads often have a way of connecting with viewers emotionally. Most of the ads on this year’s broadcast were 30 seconds. Because of that, I think brands didn’t have enough time to tell their stories. There were some good ones, but I think, overall, it was a bit of an off-year for SuperBowl.
TNG: APART FROM THE SUPERBOWL, DO YOU FIND THAT THE QUALITY OF TV ADS IS INCREASING OR DECREASING ?
PD: I think we are seeing a flight to quality. We’ve been saying to the marketplace that people don’t have to pay attention anymore. So, the fight for the viewers is not to give them a good ad once they’ve seen it. The fundamental challenge is in getting them to pay attention in the first place. And you only are going to do that if people chose to watch it. And they chose to watch it because it’s a high-quality unit. So, we’ve been seeing many major brands really increasing the quality to get people to chose to watch it.
We’ve just put out on our website the top ads of the quarter for 2016. If you look at those ads, some of them are just outstanding. Everything from Microsoft’s ad about women inventors to Apple’s “Cookie Monster”. Different strategies, different techniques, but really high-quality ads. It’s the only way people are going to pay attention.
TNG: IT’S FUNNY BECAUSE I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THE OPPOSITE. BECAUSE NOWADAYS ON YOUTUBE, IF YOU TALK ONLY TO PEOPLE ON YOUR CHANNEL, YOU CAN REALLY TARGET YOUR MESSAGE TO PEOPLE WHO ALREADY LIKE YOU, SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO APPEAL TO EVERYONE.
PD: Right. But, some products want to appeal to everyone. Targeting isn’t the only answer. If you want broad reach and you want broad reach quickly, you can’t beat television for that objective. It really depends on the objectives. But certainly, you can get far more targeted and you can deliver specific video content to individuals if you want to. But the quality for broadcast media, for linear television, has no choice but to go up.
TNG: REGARDING POLITICAL ADS. IN FRANCE, WE CAN’T DO ATTACK ADS LIKE IN THE US. AND I AM SKEPTICAL ABOUT THEM BECAUSE IF I DECIDE TO VOTE FOR A PARTICULAR CANDIDATE, NO AMOUNT OF TV ADS IS GOING TO CHANGE MY VOTE IF I DON’T LIKE THE OTHER ONE. I AM WONDERING IF THEY ARE EFFECTIVE.
PD: We have to split the audience into segments. Because, you do have that phenomenon with attack ads. Even within the Democratic Party in the US, you have people that love Hillary and hate Hillary. And Republicans that love Trump or hate him. The main thing is focusing on the swing vote, the Independents, where you have more of a chance to persuade their voting behaviour. The other end of the spectrum are completely locked in and it doesn’t matter how much TV they see, they are going to not be swayed.
We find that some political ads can be effective in making change. We have an Impact score that gauges if an ad is changing or persuading people to change their vote. This Independent group should really be the focus for political ads.
TNG: LOTS OF COMMERCIALS RELY ON CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENTS FOR THEIR CREATIVES. CAN YOU TEST IF IT’S EFFECTIVE OR NOT TO BRING A SUPERSTAR IN YOUR AD ?
PD: We actually published a couple of studies looking at how celebrities impact ad performance. The issue with celebrity ads is that they usually don’t pay out. Unless a celebrity is part of the script in a way that makes sense for the brand, celebrities can be polarizing. So it all goes back to the story line. If you think of Snickers, they often use celebrities, like Betty White or the Brady Bunch last year. Those celebrity ads work very well because of the strength of the script. And the celebrities are kind of use in character, kind in tongue-in-cheek. They work really well. If you have a celebrity endorser that comes on and say “Buy this because I buy it” or “Buy this because of me”, those tend to be very polarizing. It doesn’t matter what celebrity you chose. But think of Justin Bieber, for example. How polarizing is he ? Some people really love him — if you are a fourteen year old girl — other people can’t stand him. So, right of the bat, you are less effective, because you are kind of cutting off half your audience and more.
Our studies have found that in general, celebrity ads, don’t work as well as non-celebrity ads. Brands keep doing them, but there is always the risk of polarizing the audience.
TNG: LAST QUESTION: STEPHEN CURRY OR LEBRON JAMES ?
PD: Steph Curry, come on.
View this interview on TheNextGag
