Kantar Media, the global media intelligence company has published its annual DIMENSION report which explores the key communication planning, buying and measurement challenges faced by the advertising and media sectors from prominent global stakeholders as well as 5,000 connected consumers in Brazil, China, France, the UK and the USA. This year, Kantar Media engaged with Irish companies like RTÉ, Group M, Kinetic, AIB, Ogilvy, and Omnicom Media to understand how the trends identified in the report resonate on the ground.
Some of the key findings in Ireland included:
- For the ongoing digital revolution, businesses need to fundamentally change to adapt
- The ability for consumers to avoid adverts is greater than ever
- To avoid ad blocking, brands need to make their advertising more entertaining and engaging
- Consumers are more savvy and slightly more sceptical as the level of information they receive increases, therefore they are likely to question the quality and authenticity of the information
- Beyond advertising, brands are leveraging product placement to subtly get messages across, through funded content and programming
- According to industry experts, quality and relevance of advertisement is key
- The industry needs to better gain a better understanding of consumers digitally in order to tailor more engaging ads to them. Currently, a significant proportion of consumers are not engaged by such ads due to poor targeting.
- The creative industry needs to understand how consumers are consuming media
- Advertising is a long game – it’s about how brands make consumers feel
- Consumers want more personalisation from their mix of media, in whatever format, platform or channel that they use
- Consumers are willing to trade privacy and data for personalised media
- Advertising is more focused, more personalised, more bespoke, but as a result less exciting
- Technology is driving consumer convenience, from smart televisions to online / mobile banking
- Traditional media is still relevant to advertising and is finding ways to keep its medium alive by migrating to new platforms to reach its market
- Artificial intelligence will have an impact on media behaviour and engagement
- To prepare for the continued impact of technology, the industry needs to learn to integrate all data sources
- As the digital world grows stronger, so do core principles of effectiveness and relevancy
DIMENSION reveals that multi-channel continues to increase in popularity for consumers and brands alike. Across the five markets established media formats remain resilient, with 96% of respondents still accessing TV via a television set, 86% listening to the radio offline, and 73% and 72% reading print newspapers and magazines respectively. Today’s consumer will, on average, use three different content sources to proactively gather information about a brand – led by the internet (64%) and friends and family (52%).
For marketers, cross-platform activity still presents a host of challenges for both creativity and measurement, in ensuring that advertising campaigns work across multiple platforms, and that the success of these campaigns can be properly measured.
Whilst a holistic, integrated campaign is often desirable, industry leaders interviewed for DIMENSION commented it can be hard to achieve in practice due to the challenge of linking the value of earned media to paid media and creating campaigns whereby each complements the other. Thus, better quantification of earned media value and how it fits into the media mix is a key industry goal.
According to DIMENSION, 71% of connected consumers surveyed believe advertisers are better at communicating with them now than in the past. However, this figure has fallen from 73% last year, with 72% of consumers today reporting seeing the same ads over and over again. Technological changes have enabled advertisers to improve channels of communication, but there is still work to be done.
Insights from Kantar Media’s TGI consumer survey data show that in Ireland, 51% of all adults expect advertising to be entertaining, but 36% currently find it a waste of their time. Clearly there is a significant gap between expectation and what people are actually seeing.
TGI data also reveals that 52% of Irish consumers feel bombarded by advertising. Meanwhile, the insights from DIMENSION show that across the five markets 22% say they always use ad blocking software, with a further 33% claiming to sometimes block.
According to Eimear Faughnan, Managing Director, Kantar Media in Ireland: “In line with global trends, the industry leaders we spoke to in Ireland recognised a trend towards integration across platforms, with both brands and consumers increasingly active on numerous devices.
A key emerging theme is the greater need and understanding for brands to develop creative, relevant, engaging and high quality content. However, the leaders we spoke to in Ireland also cautioned against panicked reactions to ad blocking.
We know from experience that advertising which delivers consistent messaging on multiple platforms and across paid, owned and earned forms of media, is highly effective in engaging consumers. There is also an industry need for a metrics measurement tool that can be utilised across all media formats.”
