Warc Media FAQ

January 2007
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How many times do people need to see my message before they buy?
Andrew Green ZenithOptimedia BACKGROUND Marketers obviously need to take a view on how much they need to advertise in order to have an effect in the marketplace. They need to know how much is enough and how much is too much (seeing an ad too many times may produce negative effects). Only then can they estimate how much they will need to spend to have the desired effect. In a simple world, an advertiser might determine from various sources that he needs to reach his target consumer three times in a month to have an impact. With this knowledge under his belt, he can then calculate how much it will cost to buy media that reaches a given number of people the requisite three times. From there, the relevant connections between different levels of spending and its marketplace effects can be made will a 10% increase in budget, for example, reach more people the right number of times or the same people with unnecessary extra frequency? THE ISSUE In the less simple world in which we live, things are more complex. The first problem is that everybody is different. As a result we have to work with averages (an advertising campaign that reaches one person once and a second person five times reaches them both an average of three times...). Sometimes advertisers target a frequency range to make their task a little more realistic (e.g. aiming to reach people an average of 24 times every month). A second problem is that people don't fully understand the reasons they buy one brand rather than another. Advertising is likely to be but one of the many influences on the decision. But, as Roderick White has written: ...advertising can only work by what it gets into the mind and memory of the target consumer. Here, over time and aided by other factors, especially brand experience, it builds a pattern of brand associations, which can be strengthened by repeated exposure to ads and may weaken without regular 'topping up'.1 Traditionally, marketers were taught that advertising influenced consumers in a sequence of rational learning steps: a consumer would see an ad and it would generate interest in the brand being advertised. Upon repeat viewing, this interest might turn into desire and then eventually into some sort of action. The most famous of these hierarchical models is known as AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action). It is not the only one at least sixteen others have been reviewed in the literature.2 The main feature of the models is that a positive response to one step is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a favourable outcome at the next step. More recent work by neurologists has led many to argue that feelings, not reason are the dominant determinant of human behaviour. Advertising is not something people sit down consciously to learn and memorise. So simply asking people what they remember cannot get to the heart of how they make purchasing decisions and the role marketing and advertising play in the process. Growing advertising and brand clutter has made consumers increasingly adept at screening out messages they do not want to see or hear and increased the difficulty of recalling individual ads or campaigns. APPROACHES The AIDA-type models have spawned measures of consumer recall and ad recognition as surrogates of advertising effect. These have become standard amongst most marketers. Obviously, the argument goes, consumers have to remember advertising for it to have any effect. When recall or recognition are tracked over time, they can help guide marketers to the right level and mix of marketing activity. Analysis of single-source behavioural data in the UK and US marketplaces by Colin McDonald3 and John Philip Jones4 respectively showed that significant short-term advertising effects on brand purchasing behaviour definitely existed and that adding frequency may not be costeffective. Erwin Ephron5 built on this work, arguing that it would pay advertisers to focus on 'recency' rather than frequency of exposure. Just one

message at the right moment (after a decision to purchase has been made) can be sufficient; additional exposures make little difference. Spreading a campaign over as many weeks as possible will therefore be more effective than concentrating it into a short period at high weight. Ehrenberg6 has argued that the primary role of advertising is not so much to persuade as to publicise a brand. Brand purchasing behaviour fits into a well established pattern for most people that changes little over time. All advertising can hope to do is to increase the saliency of a brand ensuring it comes to mind when a purchase is made. This would seem to tie in quite neatly with the recency idea. Robert Heath has criticised using recall as a way of helping make decisions on advertising effect (asking people to recall things they have no reason at all to remember),7 arguing that most of it is processed sub-consciously and needs to be tracked in a different way. In an analysis of a large global database of brand advertising material, Cramphorn8 concluded that the AIDA model failed to explain the effect of advertising on brand purchase intentions. There was, however, a strong link between peoples' feeling about brands, especially when combined with their experience of the brand itself, and purchase intention. The implication of this was that the most important thing marketers need to do is to manage the emotional links between consumers and their brand. This is not the same as maximising advertising recall or brand recognition and is likely to involve more indirect approaches that minimise opportunities for respondents to think too much. SUMMARY None of the above approaches has provides 'the' answer to our question of how much advertising is enough. That is mainly because there is no single answer; but also because much of the work to date has simply not been successful in identifying what makes consumers tick. The balance of the evidence seems to fall on the side of those who argue that most purchasing takes place on auto pilot, with advertising playing a long-term role in building positive feeling towards brands (in conjunction with brand experience) and helping to nudge consumers between familiar brands in a repertoire. The implication for marketers is that they still need to track how people feel about their brand over time but that the measures used need to link more closely with their feelings and experience of brands in a given product category than they do with recall of specific advertising messages. ENDNOTES 1. 2. White, Roderick (2003). Ads Work But How? Admap, Issue 445 Barry, Thomas E. and Howard, Daniel J. (1990). A Review and Critique of the Hierarchy of Effects in Advertising. International Journal of Advertising. Vol. 9, No. 2 McDonald, Colin (1970). What is the Short-term Effect of Advertising? Admap, November Jones, John Philip (1995). When Ads Work. New Proof That Advertising Triggers Sales. Lexington Books. Ephron, Erwin (1995). More Weeks, Less Weight: The Shelf-Space Model of Advertising. Journal of Advertising Research. Vol. 35, No. 3. Ehrenberg, Andrew, Barnard, Neil and Scriven, John (1998). Justifying Our Advertising Budgets. WARC Conference Paper. Heath, Robert (2005). Measuring the Hidden Power of Emotive Advertising. International Journal of Market Research. Vol. 47, No. 5 Cramphorn, Spike (2006). How to Use Advertising to Build Brands: In Search of the Philosopher's Stone. International Journal of Market Research. Vol. 48, No.3

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

FURTHER REFERENCES AVAILABLE ON WARC.COM Lisa Beaumont, 5 steps to effective frequency Admap, December 2003, Issue 445 Leo Bogart, Is there an optimum frequency in advertising? Admap, February 1995 Simon Broadbent, Effective frequency: there and back Admap, May 1998 Gerard Broussard, How Advertising Frequency Can Work To Build Online Advertising Effectiveness International Journal of Market Research, Vol. 42, No. 4, 2000 Hugh M. Cannon and Edward A Riordan, Effective Reach and Frequency: Does it really make sense? Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 34, No. 2, March/April 1994 Arie den Boon, Can consumers cope? How to optimise contact frequency in a mixed media campaign ESOMAR, Worldwide Multi Media Measurement (WM3), Shanghai, June 2006 Julian Dobinson Some TV ratings are more equal than others, Admap, February 1999 Paul Dyson Using modelling to improve media laydown, Admap, December 1996 Erwin Ephron, Media Planning: Recency planning Admap, February 1997 Peter Gallucci, There are no absolutes in media planning Admap, July 1997 Lawrence D. Gibson, What Can One Exposure Do? Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 36, No. 2, March/April 1996

Phil Gullen, An excess of OTS Admap, May 1996 Melissa Heath and Erwin Ephron, Once may not be enough, but it's the best we can do Admap, November 2001, Issue 422 Prof John Philip Jones, Single-Source Research Begins to Fulfil Its Promise Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 35, No. 3, May/June 1995 Colin McDonald, Advertising reach and frequency WARC Best Practice, July 2004 Andrew Roberts, What do we know about advertising's short-term effects? Admap, February 1996 Alan Smith Print over-exposure: what are the implications?, Admap, May 1996 Stephen White How effective are your frequency models? Admap, November 1999

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