Context, viewability and sound

In early March, eMarketer released a report from IPG Media Lab that examined the lift in ad recall as a result of relevant content, viewability, and whether audio was on or off:

http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Seeing-Hearing-More-of-Ads-Lifts-Recall/1013674

As a Publisher, the first piece of news was unwelcome to me: that running an ad in a relevant context does not lift ad recall. This was not the first time I have read this, but it was the most recent (the study was performed in September 2015). In fact, seeing an ad OUT of context lifted recall by 9%, compared to a lift of 8% for an ad placed next to content related to the product advertised. So, statistically speaking, I would call that a wash. We have some success selling cross-platform packages for clients that have as their defining vision the content being created (by us or by them), and then of course we refine by audience digitally, but a greater percentage of clients are buying across the network so that they can slice and dice audiences and still have scale. As a relatively small site, it is more difficult to go to our large print clients and sell just our site; having research like this will make it increasingly difficult.

On the flip side, however, the report also examined the lift in ad recall among users with the sound off vs the sound on. As expected, ads that played with the sound on had higher recall, and the lift was the highest when ads ran above the Media Ratings Council (MRC) viewability standard (at least 50% of a video ad that was in-view for 2 consecutive seconds). Agencies, on behalf of their clients, have been demanding higher viewability, and when there is a viewability guarantee, it even gets termed “vCPM” as opposed to “eCPM.” Although it is of course harder to guarantee viewable impressions (and therefore there is less inventory), the prices are therefore higher. With research like this, however, it behooves everyone to increase viewability….the publishers who create the inventory, the agencies who negotiate it, and the marketers who get both higher recall and presumably higher sales.

Of course, the lift was also better across the board with the sound on, so we need to find ways to have users turn their audio on. I wonder if the massive amounts of video now being consumed on mobile (Facebook said in late March that 100 million hours of videos are watched daily, and that 75% of them are on mobile) will increase the number of users who have their sound turned on naturally. Otherwise, I am not sure how to spur that, other than the oft-used “Turn Sound on.”