Newsworks research and insight director Heather Dansie told the conference that “news brands are nearly twice as effective than they were six years ago”, Campaign reports
Alongside Dansie on stage for the preview of Newsworks’ upcoming ‘Attention’ study were advertising effectiveness expert Peter Field and co-founder and chief analytic officer at Lumen Research, David Bassett.
Field implored advertisers to reconsider putting significant portions of non-search and non-direct marketing budgets into social media platforms that are unable to properly build brands.
“We have to fix it”, he urged attendees.
Meanwhile, Bassett shared Lumen research of hundreds of campaigns as part of the Attention study, which found display ads get 40% more attention on news brand sites than others.
Elsewhere on the day, representatives from members of The News Alliance held a session to raise awareness of news brands’ commercial benefits for advertisers as well as the need to protect trusted journalism’s vital role in society.
Sarah Jones, Sky Media’s director of planning, starkly warned the news industry faced terminal decline without advertisers’ support: “Without any ad spend, news as we know it will not prevail into the future.”
Adam Foley, Bountiful Cow CEO, shared the results of the agency’s research into the effectiveness of brand ‘unsafe’ content with attendees: a 40% increase in brand life (compared to 18% on ‘safe’ content), action intent up double, consideration up triple, and brand preference up by 44%.
“We found conclusively that unsafe content doesn’t just not harm your brand, it actually enhances it”, he said.
Campaign has a full round-up of both sessions.
