Capitalizing on the Creative Canvas

Capitalizing on the Creative CanvasPublished: June 2011 | By Yahoo!, Innerscope

“I believe that scale combined with a creative canvas that has the power of evoking emotion to drive actions and behaviors will add up to success in the future.”

Ross Levinsohn
Executive Vice President of Americas, Yahoo!

Taking this to heart, Yahoo! Insights aimed to understand how marketers can capitalize on new digital creative canvases by understanding how ads resonate emotionally with consumers. By looking at how consumers respond at a non-conscious level to specific elements within the ad units, 5 best practices emerged for how advertisers can leverage larger online ad units to achieve their marketing objectives.

Methodology

Yahoo! partnered with Innerscope, an expert in biometric and eye tracking research, to evaluate responses from ninety 25-40 year old respondents exposed to 10 creative executions of the Login Takeover Ad. Biometric measures of response included: heat maps, gaze plots, emotional resonance and cognitive processing. In addition, respondents were asked a series of questions at the end of their online tasks, including likeability of the ads and unaided recall of the brands. Innerscope evaluated and compared the performance of the 10 ads based on 3 factors: unaided recall, likeability and emotional resonance. Finally, although we performed the analysis on real ads, for the purposes of this document we de-branded the ad units that we studied.

Capitalizing on the Creative Canvas

Key Findings

Login Takeover Ad Units Had Much Higher Levels of Engagement than Typical Display Ads

100% of the respondents fixated on every login ad they were exposed to; typically 50% of consumers will notice a display ad. In addition, consumers exposed to the Login Takeover Ad fixated at least six times on average on each ad, compared to only 2 fixations for a typical display ad. These increased levels and quantity of fixations demonstrate that the Login Takeover ad unit is effective in getting noticed by consumers; however, success for brands means the message also has to resonate. The best practices below are guidelines for how to use the Login Takeover ad most effectively. The findings from this ad can be applied to other unconventional ad spaces online.

Creative Best Practices

1. Location is Everything: Center your ad around the action on the page.
   Consumer Insight: Conventional wisdom tells us consumers read from left to right. However, when examining consumers’ gaze plots and heat maps for the Login Takeover ad, we discovered that consumers read from right to left and middle to top because the navigation of the page started with the login area on the right side of the page. Likewise, the area just to the left of the login area received the most visual attention and generated the strongest emotional response.
   
   Creative Implication: Align with the key action on the page.
   
   • Put key information (logos, key messages, etc.) just to the left of the login area.
   • Right justify important text, images & logos.
     Capitalizing on the Creative Canvas
     
2. Keep it Simple: Bigger doesn’t equal more.
   Consumer Insight: The conventional wisdom of keeping ads simple applies to these new units. Consumers fixated on key images at a higher rate if there weren’t competing images or too much text in the ad. In this space, the audience is only attentive for as long as it takes to complete their intended task.
   Creative Implication:
   
   • Utilize existing brand equity to grab consumers’ attention and drive emotional and cognitive engagement.
   • Reduce confusion by simplifying messages and imagery. Simple ads create stronger breakthrough and reduce confusion.
     Capitalizing on the Creative Canvas
     
3. Create a Visual Contrast: Ads that blend don’t get noticed.
   Consumer Insight: Contrary to conventional design wisdom, which says to make your ad blend with the content it surrounds, our best performing ads had backgrounds that contrasted with the white login area. These contrasting backgrounds drove both higher fixation levels for the ads and higher emotional response to the background itself.
   Creative Implication: Take advantage of dark, rich or textured backgrounds to create emotional connections and draw consumers into the ad.
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   Give Them a Reason to Act: Big canvases work for direct response ads.
4. Consumer Insight: Big ads are NOT just important for brand advertisers. Emotion drives brand attributes and CTR in the case of the Login Takeover ad. Buttons with higher CTRs are located near elements on the page that generate a strong emotional response, like deals or immediate results. Generic call-to-actions like “more info” or “click here” don’t create an emotional response. The button itself, will not generate much emotional response, which is why having a strong call-to-action located near the button provides the most impact.
   Creative Implication: Create emotion near where you want consumers to take action.
   
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5. Use Faces... But Judiciously: Faces always get noticed, but can be distracting.
   Consumer Insight: People are drawn to faces and fixate more on ads that include faces, but ads with faces are not always the most successful. Only one of the top five ads tested featured a person, compared to three of the bottom performing ads that did. This is in part because, in the lower performing ads, the faces distracted consumers from key messaging by either having too many competing facial images or faces that were visually unappealing.
   Creative Implication:
   
   • Faces should be closely linked to product messages or be a known product spokesperson.
   • Use a single facial image to minimize distractions.

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Conclusion

As the digital landscape continues to evolve there will be an increase in larger ad units appearing in unconventional spaces (non-content pages).

Conventional design wisdom may not hold in some of the more innovative ad spaces; therefore, advertisers need to learn what engages consumers visually and emotionally to best capitalize on new digital creative canvases. Although, these best practices are specific to Yahoo!'s Login Takeover Ad Unit, the broader principals can be applied to all large ad units.

Novel ad units deserve novel design and, with the use of biometric research and testing, marketers can use the creative best practices to make the most of these new ad spaces.

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