Advertising by Mindset: Optimizing Ad Receptivity Based on ActivityPublished: September 2010 | By Yahoo!
Online
advertising has the opportunity to target the right consumer with the
right message at the right time. However, until more online advertising
is data-driven, which enables advertisers to connect to their target
audiences with highly-tailored messages, marketers need to think about
how they can evolve their digital media buying strategies.
To be
successful, the key lies in understanding how to map advertising tone,
format, and call to action to our understanding of consumer mindset.
What consumers do online, and more specifically why they’re doing it,
has implications on how receptive they are to your advertising. For
example, your mindset when emailing will be different than your mindset
when shopping, checking stock quotes, or playing fantasy sports – and
your receptivity to advertising will likely be different as well.
In
partnership with MediaVest and P&G, Yahoo!’s Advertising by Mindset
study takes an in-depth look at this relationship between mindset and
receptivity in order to answer some important questions for marketers:
- What are the key motivations that drive consumers to go online?
- How does the mindset for each of these online activities affect ad receptivity?
- How can advertisers optimize their creative to match the consumer’s mindset and improve effectiveness?
To answer these questions, we surveyed more than 3,300 people, age 18-55 across the U.S. using both qualitative in-home sessions and quantitative surveys. On top of that, we leveraged the power and breadth of Yahoo! user data by analyzing millions of data points across the Yahoo! network to add real-world context to our findings.
Key Findings
1. All online activities can be grouped into seven buckets. Within a single session, consumers can participate in several or all activities. Consumer mindset varies greatly as consumers move from one activity to another.
| Manage | Managing key aspects of your life, like checking a stock portfolio or paying a bill online. |
| Shop | Purchasing or comparing prices for goods or services. |
| Research | Searching for a specific piece of information, like a health- related question or looking for a new job. |
| Inform | Informing oneself about current events, news, or sports updates. |
| Connect | Communicating with others via chat, email, social media, etc. |
| Entertain | Consuming entertainment content, such as celebrity news, games, videos, etc. |
| Passion | Pursuing a hobby or learning about something one is passionate about. |
These seven activities can be grouped into three larger categories by mindset
| Accomplishing Goals | Browsing Leisurely | Pursuing Passion |
| Manage, Shop,
Research Consumer is attempting to complete a task that requires full attention and has an end goal. | Connect, Inform,
Entertain Consumer is in the middle of something, but is open to redirection and exploration. | Passion Consumer is deeply involved in an enjoyable experience that requires full attention. |
2. Mindset plays a critical role in how receptive consumers are to marketing messages.
- When accomplishing a goal, advertising can feel intrusive unless highly targeted to what one is doing. For these activities, ads should be simple and subtle, yet enable the user to achieve their task at hand.
- When browsing leisurely, advertising is expected and consumers are most open to receiving marketing messages. Ads do not necessarily need to be relevant to the site content, however, consumption here is fast, so ads must entertain, engage, and grab their attention.
- When pursuing a passion, advertising can feel intrusive unless it is highly related to what they love. Be careful to respect their immersion, but when done correctly, this presents a great opportunity to associate your brand with the user’s passion.
3. When surveying consumers who remembered seeing ads, we found higher levels of ad interaction among those pursuing passion and accomplishing a goal.
4. Consumers also prefer different ad formats depending on their online activity. Goal-oriented activities call for simple text and static images, whereas the opposite is true when users are browsing leisurely and pursuing passions.
5. Leveraging these findings with optimization tools such as Smart Ads, behavioral targeting, and time-spent optimization will lead to more effective advertising.
How to Optimize Ad Creative by Mindset
| | Accomplishing Goals | Browsing Leisurely | Pursuing Passion |
| Ad Preference | • Build awareness quietly | • Entertain and interact | • Align with their passion |
| Tone | • Subtle • Serious | • Open • Playful | • Interesting • Contextually relevant |
| Creative Principles | • Unobtrusive • Few words • Informative • Simple • Limited motion | • Big • Bold • Colorful • Exciting • Interactive • Full motion • Graphically rich | • Engaging • Interactive • Informative • Integrated |
Research conducted in partnership with MediaVest and P&G.
Download this article in PDF format.
