Media Department

Companies can stand to reap rewards from creating emotional connections with consumers, and it seems that radio benefits in its own way from emotional triggers. According to a Jacobs Media survey of more than 78,000 radio listeners in the US and Canada, 40% said a main reason for listening to AM/FM radio is to get in a better mood, with another 40% citing this as an important reason. Additionally, about 7 in 10 say that wanting to escape from the pressures of an everyday life is an important or main reason to listen, and about 8 in 10 listen because radio keeps them company. Read more »

75% of ad agencies responding to a BrightRoll survey believe that video is equally or more effective than TV, and that's up from 64% who believed that to be the case in last year's survey, according to a new BrightRoll report [download page]. Even more respondents (91%) believe that digital video measures up well with display, although they're less convinced about its effectiveness compared to social media (68%), search (52%) and direct response (45%). The most important aspect of video advertising to clients is its targeting capabilities, according to 45% of respondents, with reach (27%) also valuable. Read more »

Global ad spending grew by 3.2% last year, but some sectors fared better than others, details Nielsen in further results released publicly from its Global AdView Pulse report. At the forefront of spending growth were the telecom and FMCG sectors, boosting expenditures by 7% and 6.8%, respectively. On the other end of the spectrum, spending by durables brands declined by 2.1%, while healthcare companies cut back slightly, by 0.7%. Read more »

By 2015, the internet should account for 23.4% of global ad spending, details Zenith Optimedia in a new forecast. That's up more than 5% points from last year's 18%, and comes at the expense of almost all traditional media, none of which are slated to see any growth in share of spending. TV's share will remain flat, at about 40%, as will cinema's (at just 0.6%), but newspapers, magazines, radio, and outdoor will see varying levels of declining share. Print, as expected, will be hardest hit: newspapers and magazines are the only media forecast to see a decline in expenditures. Read more »

The median email click-through rate (CTR) in the US stood at 2.2% last year, and the mean rate at 3.3%, but the top quartile of performers achieved an average rate of 8.3%, according to [pdf] a new email marketing benchmarks study from Silverpop. The study also reveals that when it came to unique open rates, the top quartile of performers in the US saw an average rate of 34.7%, more than double the median rate of 16.5%. The strongest performers bested the median click-to-open rate by 83% (24% vs. 13.1%). Read more »

An online survey of 5,000 US adults, conducted by Nielsen on behalf of the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), reveals that respondents rate newspapers (in print and on the internet) as the most effective advertising source among various media. The study measured advertising effectiveness across various metrics, with print newspapers coming out on top overall, ahead of radio, internet, and TV. Breaking the media types down into different segments, the local paper topped the ratings for likelihood to purchase and propensity to notice ads. Read more »

Heavy usage of one of the top 3 media (by reach) does not necessarily mean that less time is spent with the other media, according to [download page] results from an Edison Research and Arbitron study. The study looks at self-reported average time per day spent with the internet, TV, and radio, sorting the results by heavy users of each. Heavy internet users (4+ hours per day) report spending more than 7 hours per day on the internet - but the amount of time they spend watching TV (3:35 vs. 3:33) and listening to the radio (2:07 vs. 2:04) is on par with the general population. Read more »

Online video has been the subject of a fair amount of research of late (see here and here for examples), and is certainly worthy of the attention. But, Edison Research and Arbitron would like to remind everyone that there's something else out there called online radio, and among users, it's far ahead of online video in terms of weekly consumption. According to the researchers' study [download page], self-reported time spent per week is about 3 times higher for weekly online radio listeners (11 hours and 56 minutes) than for weekly online video viewers (4 hours). And the gap's only getting bigger. Read more »

Increasing smartphone penetration, growing consumption of the mobile internet, and concurrent increases in ad inventory should spur 49.3% annual growth in local mobile ad spending through 2017, according to a new forecast from BIA/Kelsey. That would bring local mobile ad spend from $1.2 billion last year all the way to $9.1 billion in 2017. While remaining a fraction of the total local media equation, mobile's share of the pie would grow from 0.9% last year to 6.1% at the end of the forecast period. Read more »

A new study [pdf] from YuMe and Decipher examines consumer interaction with media content across laptops, tablets, and smartphones, concluding that the study participants (from the UK) are largely "device agnostic," meaning that environment and context matter more for media consumption than screen size. The study finds, for example, that regardless of device, consumption of videos takes place most often in the home, and that users are both more relaxed and explorative while at home. Read more »