Millward Brown & Kantar Media • 11 Madison Avenue • 12th Floor • New York, NY• 10010
Measuring Acceptance and Avoidance of TV Advertising to Maximize ROI
July 2011
Millward Brown:
Helen Fearn, Director Global Innovations
Mitzi Lorentzen, VP Client Solutions, Communications Development Research
Kantar Media Audiences:
Jeff Boehme, Chief Research Officer
Alex North, Product Manager: RapidView
2011 Millward Brown & Kantar MediaMeasuring Acceptance and Avoidance of TV Advertising to Maximize ROI 2
THE NEW TV REALITY
Technology is helping define a new reality in television. Digital technologies are empowering consumers with the greatest
choice of content, in the highest quality, delivered when and where it is most convenient: welcome to the consumer age of
television.
This means that advertisers have to embrace new methods of reaching consumers with their message. The new reality
presents two critical issues:
• Consumers are more actively multi-tasking on multiple devices – and the risk is potential lost audiences and ad
avoidance
• Traditional measurement is challenged to evaluate this environment with consistent metrics
This evolution comes with great opportunity. Digital advancements are enabling more efficient targeting capabilities and digital
devices “communicate” with a higher fidelity of data; return path data. This means greater opportunity to “mine & combine”
information so marketers can understand this new digital media landscape and improve their advertising effectiveness.
As the media industry is demanding greater TV efficiency, effectiveness and accountability, the importance of commercial
avoidance and subsequent loss in advertising revenue is becoming a growing concern among advertisers. Millward Brown and
Kantar Media have combined two key databases to help customers understand audience tuneaway behavior and therefore
minimize ad avoidance.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ‘TUNEAWAY’
Tuneaway is a measure of lost audience derived from
tuning records based on Return Path Data (RPD). RPD is
any usage data returned to a platform company (Satellite,
cable MSO or telephone provider) from a digital device. For
TV, this could be from a set-top box, IPTV, connected TV,
Internet, mobile, etc. – anything that is used to deliver TV
content digitally.
These second-by-second tuning levels enable us to
passively collect and measure audiences to channels and
programs, as well as commercials. Tuneaway analyzes the
audience present at the start of an individual commercial
and calculates the proportion of lost tuning seconds as a
result of audiences tuning away from the commercial.
As ad avoidance to specific campaigns can be high,
understanding this behavior is critical to assessing the
real value of the advertising investment. From our studies,
we have determined that many factors can influence ad
avoidance. The creative itself is a key driver, and Millward
Brown provides many clients with critical assessments
on the potential of specific ads. From the Kantar Media
perspective, tuning behavior measures the “environment”
of how an ad is received. The majority of TV tuning is still
live-only. We have seen that audience tuneaway averages
about 3%. However, this ranges and we have seen
campaigns where audience tuneaway can exceed 20%.
As a practical example, sponsors of the Super Bowl would
lose approximately $80,000 of their investment dollars
assuming an average of 3% audience tuneaway.
HOW OUR COMPANIES PARTNERED TO MEASURE TUNEAWAY
The Kantar Media and Millward Brown partnership was
conceived to determine how we can help our clients
maximize their advertising effectiveness by minimizing
audience tuneaway. By aligning two separate databases,
Millward Brown’s robust database of Link™ copy testing and
Kantar Media’s DIRECTView actual audience behavior, we
can for the first time isolate the various factors which drive
audiences away from content.
2011 Millward Brown & Kantar MediaMeasuring Acceptance and Avoidance of TV Advertising to Maximize ROI 3
Millward Brown’s Link identifies the potential effectiveness
of an ad and is validated to sales. The Link database
contains thousands of ads across a range of categories
and brands. DIRECTView is a managed RPD panel of over
100,000 digital households, representative of DIRECTV’s
national footprint of over 17.5m subscribing households.
(See figure 1)
Our analysis focused on a given month of Kantar Media’s
second-by-second TV tuning for 184 ads that had been
pre-tested via Millward Brown Link across a range of
categories. Our goal was to address two questions:
• what creative metrics from a pre-test can predict
audience tuneaway
• how media placement and measurable influences can
impact the results
Aligning these databases enables us to provide guidance
on how to optimize both creative and media placement to
minimize commercial tuneaway and maximize advertising
return on investment.
UNDERSTANDING THE CREATIVE
Understanding which creative elements relate to tuneaway
will provide an early warning signal to help advertisers
minimize ad avoidance from a content perspective and
provide insight that is actionable before the commercial is
aired.
It is important to note that tuneaway provides an
understanding of ad avoidance, but does not indicate
whether an ad will be successful if watched or “tuned”.
Millward Brown’s research on what constitutes strong
creative illustrates the importance of engaging viewers in
a branded fashion (branded engagement) so an ad gets
noticed and recalled in association with the brand. If an ad
engages viewers, the advertiser has a greater opportunity
to create associations about the brand that could generate
a response (persuasion). Combined, branded engagement
and persuasion help us understand the creative potential of
a commercial in market.
Even though TV is a passively consumed media (See Figure
2), we know that some ads are more likely to engage
with consumers in a negative way and be fast forwarded
or ‘tuned away’ from, and these contain certain creative
characteristics.
From analyses that we have completed across the two
datasets we know there are a number of creative aspects
that relate to tuneaway which can be grouped together into
three clear dimensions, as indicated in Figure 3.
Firstly viewers need to have a strong negative reaction to a
commercial in order to actively change the channel and
tune away. They find the commercial ‘unpleasant’, dislike it,
or feel inadequate or annoyed when watching it. The key
finding being, consumers have to engage with the
commercial in the first place, in order to take action
against it.
Figure 2
Figure 1
2011 Millward Brown & Kantar MediaMeasuring Acceptance and Avoidance of TV Advertising to Maximize ROI 4
Personal relevance also plays an important part, if
consumers have no interest in the category or brand, they
are more likely to tune away. This corresponds with how we
know brains process information.1 We know that the brain
prioritizes information of relevance to current or future
goals and emotion is a big cue to the brain of something
that is relevant and important.
Finally, if the message contained in the ad lacks relevance
or credibility for consumers, then they are also more likely
to tune away.
Therefore, from a creative standpoint, the advertising idea
has to resonate with consumers and tap into issues of
importance to them. The challenge is to talk about the
brand in a way that is relevant to the consumer’s current
mindset or broader values and goals to help minimize
potential tuneaway.
UNDERSTANDING MEDIA PLACEMENT
The effectiveness of an ad depends largely on where
and how that commercial is received, or its media
“environment”. Media placement can be measured on a
range of factors, or media influences, relating to the buying
strategy employed.
1. Cognitive Neuroscience, Marketing and Research: Separating Fact from Fiction, Graham Page and Jane Raymond ESOMAR Congress 2006
For the purposes of this analysis, we used RPD to identify
7 measurable media influences to determine which are the
most prominent in gauging audiences tuning away from the
commercials. These include; program, network/channel,
daypart, commercial length, the pod within the program,
position in pod and product category (see figure 4).
Broad analysis of the tuning behavior to all commercials
has helped us to identify some key trends. For example,
ads which are shown first in pod tend to have higher levels
of tuneaway. Program also affects the ad’s performance
with respect to tuneaway, as does the product category
being advertised. For example, some categories, such as
Entertainment, experience lower levels whereas others,
such as Automotive, experience higher levels of channel
switching.
We have used these data to develop a new performance
metric – the Audience Tuneaway Index (ATI). All of the
media influences listed above impact on the performance
of campaigns, and so by using broad commercial
benchmarks we can control for each influence and
calculate how campaigns would perform in an average
media environment.
We have included ATI in our study of tuneaway, calculating
benchmarks for each of the seven media influences and
applying them to the spots that ran in our 184 campaigns,
to understand the impact that the media placement had on
each one.
Figure 3
Figure 4
2011 Millward Brown & Kantar MediaMeasuring Acceptance and Avoidance of TV Advertising to Maximize ROI 5
THE REAL VALUE – COMBINING CREATIVE AND MEDIA PLACEMENT RESULTS
Although analyzing creative and media results separately
provides useful and interesting insights, the real power lies
in combining media and creative aspects to understand
how they interact to explain tuneaway.
Following the analyses that were conducted on each
individual set of data, we built a structural equation model
across the combined datasets to isolate and dimensionalize
the effects of creative and media placement on tuneaway.
While we know creative has a critical impact, the structural
equation model demonstrates that media plays an even
stronger role, accounting for 75% of tuneaway.
(See figure 5).
This can be explained by typical TV tuning behavior. As we
have seen, from a creative standpoint viewers generally
have to really dislike an ad or have it not be relevant to
actively change the channel. From a media standpoint
though, there are multiple factors which will impact even
the most powerful creative. Many consumers will intuitively
change the channel as soon as the commercial break
starts, and certain programming is better at retaining
audiences. For example, news or sports may impact the
way in which the commercials within it are consumed,
compared to a genre such as drama which usually requires
continuous engagement to follow a storyline through a
commercial pod.
Despite the media placement, the value of the creative
remains critical. Audience tuneaway does not inform us
if the commercial was remembered in conjunction with
the brand, or whether it drove sales. As such, tuneaway
analyses complement other commercial performance
measures and provide an additional diagnostic to
understand if an ad has the potential to be tuned away and
can be further optimized.
ACTIVATING THE MODEL TO HELP ADVERTISERS
The meta-analysis we conducted on the structural equation
model enables us to understand the overall trends and
causes of audience tuneaway. However, we are also able
to analyze the performance of individual campaigns and
pinpoint areas of strength and weakness. This can help in
understanding whether certain types of creative are more
likely to drive higher levels of tuneaway and identifying
warning signs to look out for before a commercial is aired.
We have analyzed a mixture of campaigns to demonstrate
the merits of our integrated creative/media approach. We
found examples of campaigns which scored well creatively
in Link but performed poorly in terms of their tuneaway,
and others which were weaker creatively but managed to
minimize ad avoidance. Examples such as these enable
us to understand, in more detail, the relationship between
creative and media and to identify specific elements
that contributed to this performance. This illustrates
how advertisers can use the measurement tools to
help minimize tuneaway at both the creative and media
placement stages.
CASE STUDY 1 – STRONG CREATIVE
The first two campaigns we investigated were from the
Electronic Goods category and were both creatively strong,
with good sales potential. They were personally relevant
to consumers, considered to contain both relevant and
credible messages and elicited a low negative emotional
reaction. We expected both ads to have low levels of tune
Figure 5
2011 Millward Brown & Kantar MediaMeasuring Acceptance and Avoidance of TV Advertising to Maximize ROI 6
away. However, while the first of these ads went on to score
as expected in market, the second had some issues with
media placement resulting in higher tuneaway.
(See Figure 6)
The Average Tuneaway Indices show us how the ads would
have fared in a completely average media environment, by
controlling for the various media influences like channel,
position in break, etc.. In this case both ads achieved similar
scores, indicating that there must have been a media effect
causing the difference in the actual levels of tuneaway
achieved. We found that the programs and channels
selected for campaigns B were more likely to be tuned
away.
For this case, Link assessed the overall effectiveness of
the commercials at the pre-test stage and with this new
learning we ascertained that there were no issues with the
creative in terms of potential tuneaway. RPD demonstrated
that even with strong creative, media placement plays a
critical role in terms of retaining an audience.
CASE STUDY 2 – WEAKER CREATIVE
The third and fourth campaigns we evaluated gave us the
opposite perspective. Both of these were weaker ads from
a creative viewpoint, with a lower likelihood of a potential
sales effect and a higher tuneaway potential. Levels of
personal relevance were low, they both created a strong
negative emotional reaction and the message that they
portrayed was either low in terms of relevance or credibility.
Although Campaign C saw higher levels of ad avoidance,
as expected, Campaign D went on to achieve low levels of
tuneaway, despite its creative weakness.
When we investigated the media placement findings we
noticed that for Campaign C, in addition to issues with its
creative, the media placement drove significantly higher
tuneaway when compared with all other ads in the category
(see Figure 7). So, in effect, two negative aspects affected
the ad – the creative and media.
For Campaign D, while there were issues with the creative,
the media placement strategy for this brand was much
better. Most programming chosen performed well, as did
the first-in-pod spots which were focused in breakfast
content as opposed to primetime. While this was not a
stronger ad creatively, media placement clearly helped
compensate for performance and minimized tuneaway.
The ATI calculation supports this finding, with both ads
again achieving similar scores when we control for the
various media influences, suggesting that if they had both
been placed in a completely average media environment
they would have seen a similar performance. As it happens,
the media chosen by each brand caused the differences in
tuneaway that were observed.
These final two ads demonstrate that there was an
opportunity to improve both creative executions before they
launched to minimize tuneaway. They also reinforce how
RPD can help optimize future media placement plans.
Figure 6
Figure 7
2011 Millward Brown & Kantar MediaMeasuring Acceptance and Avoidance of TV Advertising to Maximize ROI 7
with Kantar Media’s Return Path Data, offering insight to
optimize future media placement to reduce tuneaway.
Ultimately, our measurement helps to maximize advertising
Return on Investment.
AUTHORS
Millward Brown:
Helen Fearn, Director Global Innovations
Mitzi Lorentzen, VP Client Solutions, Communications
Development Research
Kantar Media Audiences:
Jeff Boehme, Chief Research Officer
Alex North, Product Manager: RapidView
OVERALL CONCLUSIONS
Consumers will continue to evolve with digital media,
actively selecting relevant video content and consuming it
on their own terms. To understand audiences in this digital
evolution, programmers and advertisers need additional
measurement practices to provide enhanced accountability
and insight. Commercial tuneaway does represent a
significant loss in both audience and media investment, but
there are metrics available that can help analyze campaigns
from both a creative and a media placement standpoint, to
manage and reduce ad avoidance.
Millward Brown and Kantar Media have developed an
enhanced commercial measurement technique to evaluate
the effect of tuneaway and help in minimizing it. Early
warning signs identified at the creative stage via Link give
the opportunity to modify the creative and help reduce
potential tuneaway. Media placement can be assessed