CHOICE-DRIVEN ADVERTISING CONTINUES TO BE EXTREMELY EFFECTIVE AND MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN OTHER FORMS OF ONLINE ADVERTISING

4 studies, 3 institutes and countless successful campaigns have confirmed this for years: Choice-driven advertising continues to be extremely effective and more successful than other forms of online advertising.

Are you looking for a highly effective and high-reach advertising model that reaches your target group and has nothing to do with the eternal cookie and first data debate? Then book Welect - because our extraordinarily high advertising effectiveness uplifts have been confirmed for the fourth time in a row by a large-scale advertising effectiveness study.

While the industry is discussing convergence currency or how to proceed in the post-cookie era, identifier vs. choice-driven advertising vs. contextual/semantic, advertisers are more interested in one thing: ‘What are my advertising budgets achieving?’ And: ‘How high is my ROI?’ These are important questions that we have been asking various MaFo institutes to answer for four years, working with different partners from the media, agencies and, above all, advertising companies to compare our choice-driven advertising approach with conventional advertising, i.e. advertising that is imposed on people. All marketing KPIs have been clear for four years: Choice-Driven Advertising should not be missing from any media plan.

To put it more concretely: if users choose the ad themselves, the activation performance is significantly increased, ads are generally rated better and messages are internalised. Choice-driven advertising is rated as very trustworthy overall - and AdBlock users also like it well to very well.

The evaluation centres on a comparative analysis of the effect of self-determined and externally determined advertising consumption. The representative and quantitative online survey was conducted among 2,750 adult participants in spring 2022. The detailed study results can be found here.

Self-determined advertising consumption means: clear uplift in brand KPIs

Consideration, willingness to buy, brand image: The study results impressively show that all three brand KPIs perform much better as soon as users are able to choose the advert themselves.

Product and purchase interest for the respective product area is consistently higher among consumers who have chosen the advert - at the same time, people who choose a brand's advert have a significantly better image of the brand. Choice-driven advertising therefore reaches consumers who are interested in the advert and open to the brand's advertising message.

According to the study design (‘Comparison of spot selection with choice-driven advertising vs. classic/independent spot selection’), this makes it clear that an advertising contact with choice-driven advertising placement clearly has a stronger effect than a conventional pre-roll.

Reasons why consumers choose an advert? Relevance, product interest - and preview images

Personal relevance and interest in a product (or brand/topic) are the most important criteria for choosing an advert.

More than half of users state that they watch the advert more attentively by actively selecting it and express an interest in having this option more often. At the same time, the adverts are also perceived as less annoying.

Only if the advert is for a previously unknown brand does another criterion become more important: the preview image

Choice-driven advertising works: impressive uplift in almost all KPIs

In addition to the above-mentioned brand KPIs of consideration, willingness to buy and brand image, an uplift can be seen in almost all other KPIs.

Self-determined advertising consumption has a demonstrable effect - this is particularly evident in the KPIs liking (+36%), message understanding (+35%), detailed evaluation (+20%) and activation (+28%).

Third-party advertising consumption without the active selection of a spot performs significantly worse here - with self-determined advertising consumption, on the other hand, the sender is recognised more frequently, the message is better understood and the willingness to buy is significantly more pronounced with choice-driven advertising placement.

Great trust in - and extreme satisfaction with choice-driven advertising

In addition to high advertising impact, trust in choice-driven advertising is particularly striking:

In terms of data protection & security, significantly more than a third of respondents feel that choice-driven advertising is more trustworthy than other forms of online advertising; a further third rate choice-driven advertising as trustworthy overall.

The general format of being able to select adverts independently was rated as very good or good by 70% of respondents. This is primarily due to the ability to select adverts according to their own relevance or interest (44%) and to be able to decide for themselves - i.e. to have the choice between different adverts (33%).

Choice-driven advertising is also received positively by AdBlock users who actively try to avoid online advertising: Choice-Driven Advertising convinced a total of 64% of respondents here.

Users generally like adverts better if they have chosen them themselves - this results in a significantly higher level of reception

Within the study, respondents were randomly assigned to one of two test situations: Group A was able to independently select one of a total of four adverts, test group B was shown one of these four adverts without being allowed to select it. Overall, this resulted in the respondents liking the adverts significantly more when they were able to choose which advert they wanted to see.

In addition, both the general liking and the detailed rating are significantly higher when users decide for themselves which ad they want to see. This creates a more positive reception situation - in combination with the higher interest of the users reached, the advert is also perceived positively.

To summarise, the study shows for the fourth year in a row that advertising is better received when it is not imposed, but can be actively - i.e. self-determinedly - selected. Personal relevance and interest in products, brands or topics are decisive factors here - ‘choice’ thus becomes the ‘targeting’ originally used in the online advertising industry and reaches the target group and, above all, achieves impressive study results in terms of willingness to buy and product interest. The clearly positive evaluation of the general format of choice-driven advertising is also evident and underlines the high advertising impact of this form of advertising, which has also been proven in the three previous studies.