New insights offer advertisers 'unprecedented opportunities'

Numbers don’t mean anything when it comes to ad views unless levels of consumer engagement are measured, according to Nielsen Consumer & Media Insights.

Communications avenues have increased in the changing media landscape but it also presents challenges in choosing the medium to provide the most lucrative return on advertising investment

Results of a study have formed a database of information on the strength of consumer engagement in comparative advertising to aid advertisers in planning targeted media campaigns.

“We did it on the back of huge client demand for information that was more than numbers, this moves it to a more qualitative state,” said Nielsen managing director Stuart Jamieson.

It will allow the media players to identify what types of products or services are marketed most effectively on their platform and use it a promotional tool.

Mr Jamieson said the company reacted to a request from the marketplace and in a collaborative effort with the industry have delivered a unique solution.

The world-first study provides insights into the different ways target groups engage with specific media and the degree to which it leads to purchasing outcomes across key categories. Previous media engagement studies had been carried out by one media provider and only focused on their own platform.

“The wealth of information it provides creates unprecedented opportunities for advertisers and agencies to compare the strengths of media options for different campaigns,” Mr Jamieson said.

“We embarked on a path 12 months ago to be able to measure the strength of the engagement and fuse that back into a database to find out which target market is more engaged with a particular medium for what reasons, to identify the ones that inspire us or engage us.”

Mr Jamieson said the study has identified the mediums which consumers look for information to buy products in a particular category and whether they bought products as a result. He said some mediums are strong in some categories and weak in others, which is why advertisers place campaigns over multiple platforms.