At the 2023 ARF Attribution & Analytics Accelerator, MarketCast’s Tom Weiss and The Home Depot’s Allison LaFon co-presented a session about how optimized ad creative and great content combine to deliver high-performance advertising. They showed how MarketCast’s pre-launch ad testing and in-flight measurement were used in conjunction with The Home Depot’s partnership with college football programming drove ad resonance and recall scores for a wide range of creative. To view the full session, click here.
Key takeaways from the session:
1. Pre-launch ad testing helps The Home Depot predict performance and optimize creative
The Home Depot’s LaFon discussed the company’s priorities for advertising and how they team with MarketCast to copy test ads to predict in-market performance before ads ever take flight. LaFon and The Home Depot marketers use copy testing and in-market measurement scores to understand how specific ad creative and messaging are going to land with their core audiences, which ranges from construction professionals and home DIYers to DIFMers (Do It For Me-ers) across generational segments.
“The benefit of ad testing is the data shows our teams what’s working and what’s not before the ads ever go into market,” said LaFon. “We may think something is differentiated or attention-grabbing in our ads, but the data may say otherwise, allowing us to shift focus to a different type of product or DIY project to help the ads connect better with audiences.”
2. For younger home improvement audiences, brand likability in advertising is key to winning them over
According to LaFon, when speaking to younger audiences, the power of the brand is more important than ever. “For us to get millennials attracted to our brand, we must win over their hearts before they let us in their homes,” said LaFon. “We’ve successfully done this by investing more of our advertising in brand over the years. And MarketCast’s data helps us demonstrate how our brand contributes to consumer intent much like our traffic-driving ads do.”
According to LaFon, The Home Depot creative maintains strong brand recognition thanks to its consistent creative visual and audio cues in advertising. When they make even the slightest change to these brand elements, it can impact brand memorability. In fact, there are instances where The Home Depot team identified these gaps, using MarketCast ad testing data, and made changes to optimize the creative before it went into the market, which helped improve the ad’s performance.
3. Great creative works best amongst resonant content
According to LaFon and Weiss, it’s important to consider ad creative optimization with the type of content where ads are placed. For example, MarketCast and The Home Depot research found that college football generated over 40% ad recall among The Home Depot’s audiences. This was then factored in when creating and optimizing creative that would run during this type of programming.
“We found the content environment has a big impact on ad performance metrics,” said Weiss. “When compared to other programming, the college football programming where The Home Depot placed their ads had a positive impact on Ad Likeability and Shopping Intent, which is a big win for everyone.”
At the end of last football season, when they looked at The Home Depot’s ad performance during ESPN’s College GameDay, they found most ads met or outpaced the norm on most measures among adults 18-64. Not only did the 2023 ads meet the norm for brand memorability, but they far exceeded the norm for likeability (70% vs. 53% norm) and shopping intent (66% vs. 50% norm.) The bottom line? Fully optimized ads and smart, targeted placement with great content drive performance and resonance across segments.
4. Creative quality remains the biggest driver of in-market branded memorability
When developing your ads, regardless of the campaign’s goal, advertisers must stick to the golden rule: ad creative quality is key. Without strong creative, your ad will barely make it off the ground, failing to break through with audiences.
MarketCast’s Tom Weiss reinforced this message with fresh MarketCast Brand Effect data that showed Creative Quality is the biggest driver of brand memorability for advertising today – by a factor of more than 40%. According to Weiss, media flighting, placement, and the quality of the supporting content itself are the other determining factors for how audiences engage with and respond to advertising.
To obtain a copy of the session presentation or to learn how MarketCast’s team of experts can help you optimize your creative and drive resonance, contact us.