Audience Group increased ESOM without spending on ESOV by buying to attention.

Objective

To disproportionately win Extra Share of Memory without spending on Extra Share of Voice.

Audience Group’s client year on year budget was to remain stable in an inflationary environment, so they needed to do more with what was effectively less. They knew from previous results that when their client’s share of voice was high, sales followed (five to seven months later).

Method

“If our ad is not seen, it can’t be noted. If it is not noted, it can’t be remembered. If it isn’t remembered, it won’t serve any value in building brand salience and allowing the brand to be recalled as people enter the category to purchase.” Says James McDonald, Audience Group. Director of Strategy.

“Our approach was to start treating brand salience and ad recall as though it were a direct response campaign. Working with Chalice AI, we developed a custom bidding algorithm that linked to an online brand study. This algorithm analysed any uplift on brand or ad recall, found the auction conditions that related to this uplift and then selected (and won) auctions that were likely to also aid in brand and ad recall.”

“With this method, alone, an uplift of 14% in our client’s ad recall was observed. Once this was established, we partnered with Amplified Intelligence to build a pre bid score to better inform and guide the custom-bidding algorithm. This pre-bidding score was based on the attention level of the ad placement being auctioned.”

“In essence, we were able to confidently bid higher amounts for ad placements with more seconds of attention. This enhancement ensured that our budget was invested into placements that both had a high likelihood of having high attention and a high chance of delivering brand and ad recall in the quantitative study.”

Outcome

The results showed a 74% uplift in brand recall after the attention-data-fed algorithm was pushed. It resulted in higher recall without spending any extra budget delivering the client a higher share of memory without lifting ESOV.

While this one tactic can’t be isolated in the broader business results, it was a key change to the year-on-year media strategy in a year that netted that client their largest ever number of leads and appointments.

Take it to work

“There is little doubt in my mind that optimising your media buy for attention delivers better brand recall which leads to higher mental availability of your brand come a purchase occasion.” Audience Group’s James McDonald states. “This leads to a consideration of what is an optimal frequency and can you afford to advertise less often when you are maximising the impact of each impression.”