Creative Wins: Ad Quality Beats Targeting In Driving Sales.

Results of several studies focused on factors that drive sales effect for advertisers show that brand awareness is the key to purchase conversion, and that the creative quality of ads is the top sales driver, contrary to marketers’ perceptions.

“This is a surprise to advertisers and media agencies who think media tactics (targeting, reach, etc.) drive the most sales,” Cumulus Media/Westwood One Audio Active Group Chief Insights Officer Pierre Bouvard says in Westwood One’s weekly blog, which cites research based on nearly 450 ad campaigns conducted by NCSolutions and Nielsen, compared to findings by Advertiser Perceptions. “Marketers massively underestimate the immense sales effect power of creative.”

Indeed, NCSolutions’ study finds that creative powers 49% of sales, vs. marketers’ estimate of 21%. The Advertiser Perceptions study shows that the sample sees targeting as the greatest driver of sales, at 25%, while the reality is just 11%.

The blog also notes a study from brand tracking firm Tracksuit, in partnership with TikTok, showing that aided awareness of campaigns drives conversion rate and improves performance efficiency, with stronger brand awareness resulting in 2.86 times greater conversion rates vs. low-awareness brands.

“A strong brand makes your performance marketing work harder — the stronger your brand, the greater your performance efficiency,” Bouvard says. “Brand awareness is a controlling factor for the outcomes of performance marketing, [and] brand is the foundation on which performance success is built: the stronger the brand, the stronger the foundation.”

Focusing on podcast advertising, a Podscribe study — based on a year’s worth of ad campaigns from more than 240 advertisers, with a total of 20 billion impressions — finds that smaller podcasts with less than 750,000 monthly impressions generate more visitors per impression with lower cost per acquisition, while, the study says, “large shows [have] higher CPMs [and] more casual listeners who are less connected to the host, and less likely to engage with ads.”

Additionally, the survey finds that podcast ad effects take place over an extended period of time: 80% of visitor impact occurs between day 2 and day 30, while half of visitor impact occurs between day 11 and day 30.

Podscribe’s research also shows that host-read ads generate 15% more conversions than producer reads, yet cost-per-acquisition costs are similar due to CPM differentials. A focus on ad length finds 15-second podcast ads are very costly on a CPA basis, while longer ads yield similar conversions and CPA. “This mirrors the findings of AM/FM radio creative effectiveness studies which reveal very little campaign effect differences between thirty-second ads and sixty-second ads,” Bouvard says.

The Podscribe study shows a wide difference in purchase conversation rate and cost per conversion depending on ad category, while an analysis of the top 10 podcast genres shows the same CPA ($63), up to $84 for the next five genres, and $115 for the bottom four.