We both purchased billions of advertising exposures, but yours has no effect?

A few days ago, I saw a message from the head of a client’s marketing department on WeChat Moments, which roughly said: “With this wave of advertising plan, we have 3 billion exposures within a week, covering a total of 300 million unique users. It is estimated that one in five Chinese people will see our ads…”

"It is estimated that one in five Chinese people will see our advertisement..." This description may be intended to help the boss understand the effect of the advertising more vividly, but if your boss really stops pedestrians on the street and asks them, how many people will say that they have seen his advertisement?

The probability of someone saying "I have seen it" may be so low that it may make you doubt your life, and from then on you will be branded as a fraud by your boss. Facing your boss’ accusations, you may feel innocent because the data is indeed 300 million independent users! Could it be that the media and third-party monitoring companies are working together to fake traffic?

The data in the media may be a little bit inflated, but not so inflated that we have to drink soup. So, why is it that after spending billions on advertising exposure, there is no effect?

Regarding advertising exposure, let’s discuss the three most common questions, which may answer everyone’s doubts.

• 01 Are exposure and exposure the same thing?
• 02 What is the most easily overlooked factor in advertising exposure?
• 03 Why is other people’s exposure so overwhelming?

01 Exposure and exposure may be different things

How does the media count exposure? Simply put: every time an ad on a page is refreshed, it counts as one exposure. In other words, as long as the advertisement is released, it is counted as one exposure.

Therefore, being exposed does not mean being seen, being seen does not mean being remembered, and being remembered does not mean not being forgotten.

1. Exposure does not mean being seen

Let’s explain the above idiom bit by bit. First of all, why is “exposure not the same as being seen”?

This is a home improvement advertisement on Sina’s homepage. This advertisement was counted as an exposure when I opened Sina, but did I actually see this advertisement? The answer is: I just "saw" the ad, but I wasn't "watching" the ad.

Our users are already in an environment with an explosion of advertisements. After being exposed to so many advertisements, they have already developed the ability to filter out advertisements.

For people who need home decoration, this home decoration advertisement on Sina’s homepage may attract their attention and even click on it to make a purchase; but for most users, they just glance at the advertisement.

So, this ad exposure = scanning

2. Being seen does not mean being remembered

"It is estimated that one in five Chinese people will see our advertisement..." The biggest misleading thing about this description is that many people will equate seeing an advertisement with remembering it.

For example: Compared with graphic and text ads, video ads are generally easier to remember because they have the strongest visual impact on us, combine both visual and auditory sensory stimulation, and take up a long time of your time.

Being seen does not mean being remembered, because even though it is the same exposure, there are differences in strength. Some exposures only scratch the surface of consumers’ minds, while others stab them right in the heart.

Throughout 2019, the biggest trend in advertising format was that major media outlets launched "immersive" advertising.

This type of immersive advertising, firstly, pursues visual beauty, requiring advertisers to produce exquisite video materials to form sufficient visual stimulation; secondly, in the advertising environment, it occupies the entire screen, snatches the user's first "virgin" vision, and eliminates information interference; thirdly, it uses several advertising formats to seamlessly connect and prolong sensory stimulation.

Therefore, exposure to this type of advertising = attention

3. Being remembered does not mean never forgetting

I asked you which ads you saw this week? You may recall that "I have seen Vipshop in "The Elite Lawyer" and Tmall New Year's Goods Festival in the elevator..."

But if I ask you again the next week, "What ads did you see last week?" you might look confused because you have forgotten. Advertising is a passive instillation of information, and consumers subconsciously reject it. There is a huge time gap between an advertisement being noticed and being remembered.

Today’s information noise is getting louder and louder, and advertisements are becoming increasingly difficult to remember. After a consumer has spent 30 minutes on TikTok, he may not even remember what he has watched. How can we expect him to remember an advertisement?

The most basic way to remember something is repetition. In advertising terminology, there is a corresponding word called "frequency", which is specifically used to count how many times a user has seen an advertisement.

Many advertisers assume that exposures of more than 3 times per month are effective memory, and exposures of more than 8 times per month are a waste. But I think this standard is invalid in today's media environment. The exposure of hard advertising should be set at 10+/month to achieve effective memory .

Don't be afraid that consumers will dislike your advertising, because they have never liked advertising.

So, this kind of advertising exposure = reinforcement

Scanning, gazing, intensification… The reason why exposure is different from exposure is that different forms of exposure will produce different stimulations to users.

02 Exposure intensity: one of the most overlooked factors

In the past, the exposure effect of advertising was calculated using this formula:

Exposure effect = reach × frequency

This formula actually splits the exposure effect into two dimensions, namely breadth and depth. But I think this formula is not enough to verify the exposure effect. We need to add a new factor - exposure intensity.

Exposure intensity refers to: how much sensory stimulation a certain form of advertising can give to users and how likely it is to trigger advertising memory.

Advertising effect = breadth × depth × intensity

For example, we expect this advertising campaign to cover 20% of the female population aged 25-35 in Henan Province. On average, each person has watched the ad more than 8 times, and each person stared at the ad for more than 5 seconds on average .

Currently, we cannot accurately measure advertising intensity. But there are several basic dimensions that can roughly assess the intensity of advertising.

The first dimension is the visual center.

In other words, whether your advertisement is in the center of the consumer's field of vision. For example, which of the following advertisements is more likely to attract consumers' attention?

Obviously, the patch ad above is better than the information flow below because the patch is right in the center of your vision.

The second dimension is dwell time.

Do consumers stare at the ad for 1 second or 5 seconds? The latter may be five times stronger than the former. Currently, short video media has the concept of "effective playback", that is, if an advertisement is played for less than 5 seconds, the media will not charge any fees; it is considered an effective exposure only when the user watches it for more than 5 seconds.

But this effective broadcasting technique does not apply to all commercials. Because sometimes, our advertisements must instill a concept, such as "Ideal life on Tmall", but consumers do not like this concept, so they will not take the initiative to watch it for more than 5 seconds; and sometimes, our advertisements can be made into creative stories to attract consumers to stay, such as NB's "Every Step Counts".

The third dimension is advertising exclusivity.

Ryuichi Sakamoto's music is beautiful, but if his music is played on a construction site, we will only feel annoyed. How many ads your ad is mixed with and presented to consumers directly determines the effectiveness of the ad.

What is the best advertising environment? The entire space is filled with your ads, there are no other ads, and preferably no other information. The only thing users can see is your ad.

Therefore, exclusivity has two requirements, one is filling and the other is exclusivity.

The fourth dimension is sensory mobilization.

The sense organs are eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind, which are called the six roots in Buddhism. These six roots are the six gateways for us to accept the outside world. The more portals that ads can open, the more deeply users are infected by ads.

The previous three dimensions are all about the visual impact of advertising exposure on people. In advertising exposure, vision is the first, but not the only one.

For example: in terms of hearing, in the early years, many clients who placed TVC advertisements often played some tricks in the production of advertisements. They turned up the sound during the post-synthesis of the advertisements. When commercials are broadcast on TV, the audience will suddenly be "startled" by a certain advertisement and subconsciously pay attention to it.

A few years ago, ASMR (intracranial orgasm) was popular in China for a while. IKEA also followed suit and produced commercials with ASMR effects, allowing users to get sound massage while listening to commercials.

In addition to audio-visual language, some senses are difficult to achieve through advertising exposure in common sense. For example, smell, touch, and taste.

But in fact, we can activate users’ imagination through advertising content and let them “fill in the blanks” for sensory stimulation. For example, in instant noodles commercials, white smoke is often shown to convey that the noodles are fragrant.

However, some food brands often ignore the impact of sensory stimulation on consumers in packaging design and advertising materials. For example, which of the following two graphic materials of hot pot base is better?

If we look at it from a purely design perspective, of course the one on the right has a better sense of design, but if we look at it from a sales perspective, the packaging on the right may not necessarily sell better than the one on the left. The advertisement on the right does not have a real picture of hot pot, so it is not easy to stimulate your taste buds; while the one on the left, although very cliché in design, successfully stimulates your taste buds with pictures.

Visual center, dwell time, exclusivity, and sensory stimulation all work together to strengthen the exposure intensity of an advertisement. Why are others more effective even with billions of exposures? Because other people’s exposure is more powerful.

03 Why are other people’s exposures so overwhelming? Is all that's left of your exposure data?

Do you often sigh like this: "That so-and-so company is so rich! Their ads are everywhere!" But if you use third-party monitoring software to run their advertising spending, or get in touch with the company's marketing person, you will find that their annual advertising budget is not an astronomical figure.

You may think that the third-party data is inaccurate, or that the company is keeping it secret and not telling you the truth. But based on my years of experience, there is only one reason for that "overwhelming advertising effect": their advertising is more reasonable.

Why can other people’s exposure be so overwhelming? And all that’s left of your exposure is a bunch of cold data? Let’s unpack the secrets inside the black box.

First, we must understand that “overwhelming” is a perception, not a fact. Then why can other people’s exposure effects break the objective facts?

Although the world is big, our living circle is not big. Or, to be more precise, the world we perceive is equivalent to our living circle, including the physical world and the spiritual world.

Let’s take the 2020 New Year’s Eve program as an example. People from different circles feel the world differently in their circle of friends.

On December 31, 2019, if you open my circle of friends, you will see information about Mr. Luo Zhenyu’s New Year’s Eve speech “Friends of Time”. Some people forwarded the nine-square grid, some forwarded articles, some complained and commented, and some quoted golden sentences... In short, in my circle of friends, you will feel that the whole world is watching the New Year's Eve speech.

But if we look at the ratings for that day, this knowledge-based New Year's Eve live broadcast was far behind the star-studded New Year's Eve parties on Mango, Lychee and Tomato channels.

I think, for a Li Yuchun fan, what she felt on that day was that the whole world was licking the screen, looking forward to their idol's appearance.

The reason why advertising is everywhere is because it covers your sky and your ground. Therefore, the first method to make advertising everywhere is to transform advertising exposure from reaching the target group to operating among the circle of people.

For example: The target group of the home appliance industry is generally married people aged 30-45 years old. But the target group is still very broad. When placing advertisements, we can only exclude some young audiences and people with gray hair. With such a large population, the advertisement exposure may only be enough to lay a few bricks on the ground.

But we can proactively segment our audiences, say different things to people in different segments, and use a new approach to reach consumers more efficiently.

For example, the initial population profile of a certain mite removal brand is: white-collar workers in 1st-3rd tier cities who are interested in the latest technology products and have searched for or purchased mite removal devices, vacuum cleaners, air purifiers and other household cleaning appliances online.

This mite removal device brand divides people into different categories, such as people with sensitive skin, health punks, and storage enthusiasts who advocate letting go...

Although these labeled circles of people seem to be far away from the functions of the mite removal device itself, the advertisement has a strong sense of purpose and the final advertising conversion rate is also very high.

Therefore, the first basic principle to make the advertisement everywhere is to find ways to expose the advertisement in a circle.

Moreover, this kind of circle-based stratification is not only the circle-based stratification of people, but also the circle-based stratification of regions and even time.

On the surface, time is just a scale for us to measure the world, but have you ever thought that each person’s schedule also represents his lifestyle?

For example, if the two catering brands Quanjude and Maxiao place advertisements, when should their advertisements be released?

Quanjude’s advertising should be concentrated on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Because Quanjude has an old-style restaurant environment, the restaurant has family round tables that can accommodate about 10 people, making it suitable for family gatherings and private banquets, which are more likely to occur on weekends. Quanjude’s advertisements should be pushed to people who have stronger family values.

And what about Ma Xiao? It is a crayfish takeaway restaurant, and is very suitable for advertising during the midnight snack time between 10 am and 2 pm, with the core purpose of reaching "late-night sleepers" in the city.

Because food like Maxiao is a standard feature of food stalls and is the root of late-night sin! Playing Ma Xiao ads during midnight snack time can arouse people’s appetite. Even if the audience can hold back tonight, they won’t be able to resist tomorrow! He is more likely to think about it all night and place an order the next morning.

We said that "overwhelming" is just a perception, not a fact. Let’s take a look at what kind of “perception” can make consumers feel “overwhelmed”?

1. Overwhelming = “Their ads are everywhere”?

Let’s look at the picture below. Which picture better represents “it’s everywhere”?

There are the same number of cats in the picture on the left and the picture on the right, but if you experience the observation in the picture on the right, you will feel that the cat seems to be everywhere.

This perception of "being everywhere" comes from the fact that you see the same ads in different locations. Because the unfamiliarity of different places and environments amplifies your feelings about familiar things.

Let's imagine again, if you see a female colleague in the office corridor every day, and pass by her about five or six times a day, you may think this is normal because you are colleagues in the same company. But what if these five or six times of passing by were arranged by God to take us to different places?

For example, you saw her once in the elevator in the morning, once at 7-Eleven at noon, once at the tea room in the afternoon, and once again when you were working overtime at night. Finally, when you got off work and took a taxi, you actually stood at the same intersection to stop a taxi...

If this is the kind of encounter, you will feel: Cupid has finally opened his eyes, and I am finally single!

When we do integrated marketing, one of the key points is whether we can reach the same audience across media. For example, when a certain coffee brand launched its new product, its advertising seemed to be everywhere. They will use the coffee shop as a radius and target customers within a few kilometers across media.

• First, elevator ads were placed in nearby communities;
• Then, there is the LBS targeted advertising in the circle of friends;
• After that, the coffee voucher fission of H5/mini program.

After combining all these advertisements, coffee consumers in this area will feel as if their advertisements are everywhere. Because I can see it in the elevator every day when I go to work, and I can see it when I check my friends circle. My friends are still forwarding their coupons, and I can see their store on the way home...

Remember, one way to make your advertising widespread is to let the same customer group see the same ad in different places.

2. Ubiquitous = “It seems like their ads are seen all the time”?

The second impression given by the overwhelming advertisements is that it seems that one can see their advertisements “often”.

Please pay attention to the word "often". This is a concept of time. Good advertising will make consumers feel that their ads are online every day. Is this “frequent feeling” simply because the advertising schedule is more dense?

Of course not, because their advertising exposure is "pulse-like" while yours is "flat-like". Let us use a picture to explain what "pulse" and "flat" advertising are.

The advertising budgets in the upper and lower graphs are the same, but the timing of advertising release and the amount of advertising released at each time point are very different.

It seems like someone is beating a drum from above, hitting it once and then stopping for a while; it seems like someone is playing a suona from below, playing it continuously without stopping. What's the advantage of the pulse method above? Fortunately, it is more in line with the memory principles of the human brain.

There are two basic conditions for us to remember something: one is that this thing gives us enough stimulation, which is the exposure intensity principle we talked about in Chapter 2.

Another is to repeat it before we forget it. This is different from the exposure frequency we talked about before.

Think about how we memorized English words back then. The most efficient way to memorize words is not to memorize them every day, but to review the memorized words in a timely and regular manner.

The same principle applies to the impact of advertising on people. With the same budget, the amount of "pulse" advertising released each time is larger than that of "flat" advertising, so it can give consumers a greater signal stimulation; and "pulse" advertising seems to be more sparsely distributed, but as long as it conforms to the human memory curve, it actually reduces advertising waste.

The representative client that uses "pulse-style" advertising is Melatonin. The advertising cost of Melatonin is actually not as much as outsiders think. Its secret lies in the "pulse" advertising.

When Melatonin began to run advertisements nationwide, it was initially broadcast during the peak season and not during non-peak seasons. They will bombard consumers with products for about 15 days during the two major festivals, the Spring Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival, to leave the deepest impression on consumers.

Later, Melatonin extended this advertising model to the whole year. In the annual advertising schedule, it will be broadcast intensively in the first three months, and then every other month. It will even be broadcast every other day. The cost of broadcasting every other day will be reduced by 50%, but the effect will not decrease.

Therefore, if you "often see advertisements of a certain brand", it is often not because they have a lot of money, but because they are doing the right thing.

To sum up

• Being exposed does not mean being seen, being seen does not mean being remembered, and being remembered does not mean not being forgotten. Different forms of advertising will produce different exposure effects;
• In advertising exposure, the most overlooked factor is exposure intensity. Exposure intensity can be measured by “visual center”, “dwell time”, “ad exclusivity” and “sensory mobilization”;
• The reason why some exposures feel "overwhelming" is that users see the same ad in different locations, which amplifies the unfamiliarity of the ad; and the pulse advertising method can make people feel that they see it frequently.

Exposure is the most basic function of advertising, but because it is too basic, it is often unpopular. It is like a martial artist who must first learn the horse stance, and only when his lower body is stable can he practice the Shadowless Kick and Eighteen Dragon Subduing Palms.

After spending billions on advertising exposure, why is there no effect? Many advertisers often question the media about this issue, but in fact, the people companies should question the most are themselves.

Only if we fully understand the principles of exposure can we reasonably trace the effects of exposure.

Author: General Liang

Source: General Liang