New Study Reveals the Impact of Relevant Advertising in Cultural Moments

There's no need to pontificate about the power of relevant advertising in live moments; the numbers speak for themselves. New research from Magna, the media intelligence and investment unit within IPG Mediabrands, and Sightly, a real-time marketing intelligence and activation company, quantifies the impact of aligning brands with real-time trends during media campaigns. In the Magna Media Trials study, titled "Societal Sync," brands were able to triple purchase intent and double search intent by targeting culturally relevant content aligned with their unique brand perspectives. The study included more than 5,300 participants and tested online pre-roll video advertisements from brands in entertainment, food and beverage, and telecom. According to Kara Manatt, evp of intelligence solutions for Magna, the research brought brand suitability and contextual targeting to the forefront, going beyond the ad industry's typical broad approach to marketing around cultural moments. The brands were able to do this by utilizing Sightly's tech platform, Brand Mentality, which transforms a brand's unique profile and traits into a real-time algorithm to help companies act quickly around appropriate cultural events. "We know that [the broad approach to cultural moments] is better than not aligning at all, but we wanted to explore what happens when you take a more nuanced approach—when it is hyper-custom to the brand and the brand's perspective," Manatt said. That customization created an impact. According to the findings, culturally aligned content tailored to a brand's unique first-party inputs or perspectives outperformed general content and traditional contextual approaches, boosting purchase intent three times compared to general content and two times for broad cultural content. In addition, search intent increased two times compared to general content. Beyond increased purchasing intent, the study also shows that speed matters. More than three-quarters of consumers expect brands to respond to cultural moments within a week, and 56% of survey participants expected a brand to respond to cultural events within 48 hours. Waiting a week brought diminishing returns, according to Manatt. Among new customers, purchase intent rose by 23% when ads were delivered within a week of relevant cultural events. "Within that first week, we see great impact, but then once you move beyond that, after a couple weeks, we lost all impact altogether," Manatt said. "That just really underscores, again, the importance of timing and being nimble and being able to align quickly." Additionally, brand-specific cultural alignment increased event association by 17%, effectively positioning an advertiser as part of a cultural moment, even without custom creative, according to the companies. "If they had real-time creative or a slew of creative, we would have seen maybe even better results," Adam Katz, CEO of Sightly, said. "But the fact that the results were so staggering with a stock creative was cool to see." Staying on brand Katz explained that moving quickly around appropriate moments—and knowing your brand identity to identify those moments—is key to delivering impactful messaging. Beyond marquee events, including things like The Olympics or a Super Bowl, tech like Brand Mentality helps identify the smaller, fleeting moments that can make an impact for the brands, including things like TikTok trends or stories going viral on social media platforms. Katz said the company's platform has "hundreds of thousands of moments" coming into it every day. Heading into TV upfront season, publishers are already pitching the importance of advertising around live cultural events. Above all, the study puts weight on that proposition, showing that aligning brands with the right event can have a major impact on outcomes. "It's so important to understand that there's so much conversation out there today about upper funnel and lower funnel when it comes to brand, and this test proves that you can do both, which is critically important," Katz said. "This also proves that being consistent and authentic as a brand is the way you want to show up, and it shows that speed is everything."

Programming & Performance

New Study Reveals the Impact of Relevant Advertising in Cultural Moments

Magna and Sightly's research shows the approach can triple purchase intent

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