Geico has in recent years found inventive ways to challenge the skippable format of pre-roll video advertising. But a recent study from Magna has found that even skipped pre-roll ads can increase brand awareness.

The report, called “Turbo Charging Your Skippable Pre-Roll Campaign,” analyzed behaviors around ad skipping and identified ways advertisers can maximize the impact of their pre-roll ads. The IPG Mediabrands unit studied the online viewing habits of 11,338 users, using webcams, eye-tracking sensors and surveys to measure attention, emotional response and time spent with up to three 30-second pre-roll ads.

“There isn’t a lot of research out there on how to best create ads for a skippable digital environment,” said Shelly Rose, research director of intelligence solution and strategy at Magna. “It was a goal of this study to provide some guidelines on what works best and what doesn’t.”

The study resulted in some good news for advertisers. Of the 65 percent of viewers that skipped their pre-roll ads, 10 percent could still recall the brand. The finding is significant, said Rose, considering that out of the 35 percent who watched the videos, the study found only 45 percent were able to recall the brand.

Back in May, IPG Mediabrands signed the biggest Google Preferred deal in history. We shifted more than $200 million of our TV ad spend to YouTube.

I had no idea how much our announcement would impact the conversations that we were having with media partners, clients, peers, and even our competitors. “Why?” was the question that people kept asking. Why was that the right decision, and why was it right to move during the upfront season?

The answer is simple: At IPG Mediabrands, we believe in planning for the world we live in, not the world we grew up in. This is central to our dynamic marketing and client proposition, and how we evolve at the pace of both the consumer and industry at large.

Read the full report here

Ad-spending growth is poised for a significant slowdown in 2017, due to economic and political uncertainty, according to the latest forecast from Magna Global, the ad-buying agency owned by Interpublic Group of Cos. The global ad business will see a slowdown to 3.6% spending growth next year, down from the 5.7% growth clip projected for

Amid an ongoing ratings decline, the NFL is delving deeper into the virtual world.

This week the league will air a nine-part virtual reality series in partnership with Google to give viewers a “360-degree perspective of life in and around the NFL.” The first episode premieres on YouTube on Thanksgiving; the rest will be available on YouTube and via the NFL app on Google’s new virtual reality headset Daydream.

…..“We think this year is going to be a tipping point for VR,” says Brian Hughes, senior vice president of audience and intelligence strategy at MAGNA Global, an ad-buying firm. “It’s a way to bring fans closer to the game, both on and off the field.”

At the Digiday Programmatic Summit in Palm Beach, Florida, this week, top marketers and publishers are on hand to discuss the trends, themes, challenges and opportunities posed by programmatic advertising.

We asked four executives — two from brands and two from agencies — the same question: Are you moving from an open exchange to a private marketplace? Why or why not? Their answers, edited for length and clarity, run the gamut from feeling gung-ho about private marketplaces to being confused.

Jon Mansell, VP of Marketing Innovation, Magna Global

From a negotiation perspective, the ad spend flowing on open exchanges doesn’t have intrinsic value for us as an agency. For instance, if Hearst wants to do a programmatic deal with us, the money that goes into an open exchange appears to come from the demand-side platform — it doesn’t appear to come from an actual holding company. So the vendor looks like a buyer, which leads to a transparency issue.

From the client perspective, when they buy from private marketplaces they are in a better position from a priority standpoint and their inventory performs better. So our position is to maximize private marketplaces. Our goal is likely to spend more than 50 percent of Cadreon’s programmatic ad budget on private marketplaces by the end of 2017.

In recent years, companies like Verizon and AT&T have made no secret of their ambitions to build online advertising businesses that can take on the behemoths of Silicon Valley.

But those plans, and the billions of dollars that have been invested in them, are in peril after federal officials approved broad new privacy rues that will limit the extent to which companies can collect and use digital information about individuals.

As it turns out, a smaller screen size may be more effective at driving purchase intent than larger devices in the living room.
Hulu and Magna have released new data assessing the impact of video ad exposures in different channels on overall effectiveness.

They found ads on over-the-top (OTT) devices aided the most in brand awareness at 15% lift (versus 8.6% lift for mobile). Meanwhile, mobile performed better on purchase intent, delivering a 12.7% lift versus 8% in OTT.

“Consumers often check prices on their phone, and it’s the device they have with them more often, so it made sense that the phone would be the device that gets you further along the purchase funnel,” said Brian Hughes, SVP of audience intelligence and strategy at Magna.

This week the NBA tipped off its new season with the biggest athlete in the world getting his third championship ring. On the same night, Major League Baseball had game 1 of the World Series between two teams that haven’t won a title in a combined 174 years. And the NFL’s big game of the week? Well, it ended in a 6-6 tie.

For years, the NFL has dominated TV from September to February, bringing in the biggest ratings of anything on the air and helping the networks launch all their other shows.

The NFL’s numbers were so reliably great that it seemed like the league could broadcast anything and find an audience, no matter how conceptually ridiculous the idea was. Meaningless preseason games? Fantastic! Announce a series of names for four days straight? Great! Put a bunch of no-name rookies in shorts and have them run a 40-yard dash? Why not!?

But this year has damaged the NFL’s image as TV’s last bulletproof broadcast. Ratings have dropped, fans aren’t tuning into the boring match ups in each week’s marquee games and all anyone who watches the industry can talk about is what’s happening and why.

“Targeting people from device to device is one of the most vexing challenges in the marketing ecosystem today, and this alignment would be a meaningful step in that direction,” said David Cohen, president of North America for ad-buying firm Magna Global.