When times are tight and the future is uncertain, especially amid lingering fears about recession and a sluggish ad market, it’s tempting for marketers to focus on quick wins to get some points on the board and live to fight another day. Those quick wins, however, aren’t what sustain businesses. While helpful for the next quarterly read-out, short-term sales can easily distract teams from thinking about what really drives success: long-term growth.

Those distractions can be costly. While targeted and direct marketing makes sense when consumers are feeling the pinch or a business needs to meet a sales target, these approaches aren’t as lucrative as you might think. For example, we’ve found that promotions deliver only about half of the long-term returns that media spending does. That’s because incentives typically offset natural purchase cycles. And when consumers buy earlier at a lower price or buy more at a lower price, they’re removed from the market for that product later on, which is unfavorable to the promoter. Incentives can also train consumers to buy on incentives or to look for depth of incentive, which lowers long-term profitability.

The importance of balanced marketing strategies can’t be over-emphasized, especially when you consider that brand-building efforts are a lever that drive sales: Nielsen research has found that ongoing marketing efforts account for 10%-35% of a brand’s equity. What’s more, Nielsen Compass data shows that a brand loses 2% in future revenue for every quarter it doesn’t advertise. And over the long term, lost revenue takes a long time to gain back. Our research has found that it takes up to three to five years of solid and consistent brand building effort to recover from extended periods of not advertising.

And when you remove long-term brand building, brand awareness and consideration fall, which typically reduces the effectiveness of conversion marketing efforts. If you let your brand decay, future sales tend to decline at a 1:1 ratio. Lastly, pulling back on long-term marketing increases your cost of acquisition. So the reality of a short-term marketing strategy is share contraction because you’re forgoing future sales while increasing cost to drive near-term sales.

Historical research has also found that an outsized share of voice can increase a brand’s share of market. Several years ago, Nielsen analyzed more than 120 brands across 30 categories of typical advertising to test this thinking. The study results showed that, all things being equal, a 10-point difference between share of voice and share of market ultimately led to 0.5 percentage points of extra share growth. Practically, that means that a brand with a market share of 20.5% and an excessive share of voice of 10 points would grow its share of market to 21% in a single year.

But understanding the importance of brand building is the first step. To take your brand to the next level, it’s critical to understand which tactical investments produce the best returns in the long run. As with many industry terms and phrases, “long-term” can mean different things to different brands. The same can be true about evaluating long-term impact. Some may choose to lean on downstream purchases that result from conversions or previous brand exposures. Others may opt to analyze the impact that their marketing has on driving brand equity metrics, like consideration and purchase intent.

Each of these approaches help define the foundational building blocks of a brand’s base business, but they’re very different from one another. They also work much better when they complement each other instead of as independent approaches. Said differently, long-term measurement requires a holistic effort that incorporates both of these approaches: One that looks at the impact of downstream purchases as well as how consumer perceptions are affected by marketing exposures and how they’re sustained over time. 

Consider this: The impact of a single marketing exposure is a point in time. Once the exposure passes, its effect will fade over time. Comparatively, brand perceptions aren’t confined to a single point in time. Brand perceptions also aren’t static. They can shift, which is why marketers need to reinforce their messages over time to ensure they’re frequently engaging with their target consumers. Reinforcing those messages through media investments carries significant weight. According to the ROI norms data in Nielsen Compass, the long-term impact of media can double the impact of media spend, particularly for upper-funnel channels like TV and digital video.

Aside from aggregated proof points, analytics at a brand level can show how a shift from short-term decision making to a more well-rounded marketing approach can help marketers understand how to allocate their budgets while still working to build their brands for long-term success.

For example, a national insurance company recently set out to understand the strength of its marketing efforts across channels, campaigns and KPIs. With an eye on an unpredictable economy on the horizon, the company knew that if it wanted to safeguard its marketing investments, it would need to validate them both in the present and the future. 

To get a read on how to approach its marketing in the short term, the company enlisted Nielsen to use its most recent spending data to model quotes and items for new and existing customers, as well as renewals. The models also factored in the costs associated with new customer acquisition and customer retention.

With a clear view of how to use its marketing budget efficiently, the company took its planning a step further to understand the short-term and long-term impact of marketing on sales. With the use of Nielsen’s Long-Term Effects analyses, the company was able to prove that its marketing efforts generated more than 31% increased incremental sales over the long term, thereby justifying its investments despite the economic uncertainty. The company also discovered which business lines benefitted the most from the marketing investments, as well as which marketing vehicles drove the biggest impact. 

Yes, short-term sales are appealing and can deliver results now, but longevity and long-term business vitality need effective, balanced marketing. And perhaps more importantly, marketers need the insight into their long-term efforts to keep their investments safe and their businesses growing.

This article originally appeared on MediaPost.

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Check out the on-demand session below to learn more about these key topics:

• Understanding the difference between measurement and currency
• The future of Big Data + Panels as a currency 
• Operationalizing clean room data

Learn more about Nielsen’s commitment to measurement integrity.

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In modern culture, hip-hop stands alone in this regard, and as it celebrates its 50^th birthday this month, we can see just how beloved and influential it has become.

While it would be nearly impossible to pinpoint the exact birth of hip-hop, most music historians cite a 1973 block party in the Bronx as the event that brought the critical elements together at a large, public event. At that party, DJ Kool Herc debuted the “merry-go-round,” a style of DJing that extended the break beat of a specific song by playing two copies of the same record and switching between them at the right moments. This, however, was a full six years before the Sugarhill Gang introduced hip-hop to a wide audience with the success of its hit song “Rapper’s Delight.” The Gracenote Global Music Data content team catalogs the most highly consumed artists from around the world, including just seven artists in this 1970s era of the genre. 

Today, the sound that defines the culture has grown well beyond its Bronx roots. In fact, more than 96,000 of the most-listened to artists globally are rap and hip-hop artists, and 149 countries are home to at least one hip-hop artist. And these artists have created more than 100 sub-genres of hip-hop music.

Interest in hip-hop music has become so global, in fact, that only one-third of today’s most-listened-to hip-hop artists are from the U.S. Hip-hop is also multilingual, as hip-hop spans English and 98 other languages, dialects, creoles and regional variations¹.

Men continue to dominate rap and hip-hop, but the genre maintains a powerful base of women who hold their own on the hip-hop charts. In fact, hip-hop boasts a notable amount of gender diversity from women, mixed duos, groups and non-binary artists, especially in collaborations.

The connection to hip-hop among the Black community is undeniable, especially in the U.S., where Black audiences are 6x more likely than the general population to say it’s their favorite genre. From a listener perspective, that appeal is most evident on the radio, as hip-hop stations attract 14% of all radio listening among Black audiences. Among Black audiences 18-34, the urban contemporary/hip-hop genre accounts for 30.7% of all listening on broadcast radio and 20% of streaming audio³. And hip-hop fandom is highest in the south and among Millennials.

Hip-hop’s persistent audience engagement across media platforms represents a big opportunity for advertisers to connect with Black consumers in culturally relevant ways. And the combination of this dominant genre and trusted outlets is leading to more business with Black-owned media. According to Nielsen Ad Intel, ad spend with top Black-owned radio stations in top markets increased 92% in 2022 compared with the prior year. But the opportunity exists in video content as well. 

The hip-hop programming genre on TV is not only one of the most representative for Black talent on screen at 89%, it delivers one of the most diverse audiences as well, with about two out of three Black viewers and nearly another quarter from White audiences. 

After half a century of hit making and culture shifting, it will be interesting to watch how hip-hop innovates for the next 50 years across the media landscape. 

Sources

 ¹ Gracenote Global Music Data
²  Nielsen Scarborough USA+, Release 2 2022
³ Nielsen Radio Database, fall 2022
⁴ Nielsen RADAR, fall 2022

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Check out the on-demand session below to learn more about these key topics:

• Ensuring accurate audience representation for all people  
• How best to leverage measurement solutions to reach diverse audiences in a fragmented ecosystem

Learn how Nielsen is meeting the moment with Nielsen ONE. 

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When CODA won the best picture Oscar in 2022, many people with disabilities hoped it would lead to more inclusion of their stories in media. But aside from the awareness and accolades, little progress to further advance disability inclusion on screen has followed. 

And the trend isn’t limited to feature films. Video Descriptor Data from Gracenote highlights that the number of new disability-inclusive TV and movie titles has been declining since peaking at 365 in 2019. 

With limited inclusive options across TV and film, it’s not surprising that the disability community has found more of what it’s looking for across social media channels, where content creators with disabilities are actively filling the inclusivity void across traditional media channels. It’s important to note that while disabled creatives are finding success in social media, this is not a replacement for the decline in representation in TV and films.

Indeed, traditional media channels could learn from the success of disabled social media influencers and the brands they represent. Creatives with disabilities are providing brands with an authentic way to connect with an audience that’s actively seeking inclusivity. And importantly, branded posts from influencers with disabilities often outperform those from influencers without disabilities.

In a recent analysis of branded Instagram posts between May 2021 and May 2023, Nielsen InfluenceScope assessed the performance of 24 creators with disabilities to determine their effectiveness and ROI when compared against posts from creators without disabilities. Across eight industries, 278 branded posts from disabled creators generated a total of $474,000 in media value. Among the industries, the posts in the fashion industry generated the highest media value in absolute terms (40% of the total), but the posts in the electronics industry generated the highest value per post ($2,400 per post, well above the average of $1,700).

In aggregate, the posts from creators with disabilities scored 21.4% better in average media value than posts from creators without disabilities and drove 20.5% more interactions.

Across the industries, the branded posts from disabled creators outperformed posts from creators without disabilities in media value and engagement actions five times out of eight.

Case study: Tommy Hilfiger is reshaping fashion and beauty

Within the fashion industry, which accounted for 32% of the branded content in the InfluenceScope study, the #TommyAdaptive campaign for Tommy Hilfiger’s Adaptive collection has benefitted from the support of 26 different influencers, including three with disabilities: Jillian Mercado (@jillianmercado), Tiffany Yu (@imtiffanyyu) and Lauren “Lolo” Spencer (@itslololove). Over the past two years, the campaign has generated 257,000 interactions and $106,000 in media value.

On average, the campaign has achieved an engagement rate of 2.6% per post, collected an average of 6,000 interactions per post (more than 40% higher than the fashion industry average) and generated an average media value of $2,500 per post (also more than 40% higher than the fashion industry average).

The brand’s focus on designing for the needs of all people and the effectiveness of the digital campaign have resulted in an array of positive comments to the 47 branded posts, with 38% highlighting the brand’s focus on inclusivity and 31% expressing an appreciation for clothing that fits people with specific needs.

The brand’s focus on designing for the needs of all people and the effectiveness of the digital campaign have resulted in an array of positive comments to the 47 branded posts, with 38% highlighting the brand’s focus on inclusivity and 31% expressing an appreciation for clothing that fits people with specific needs.

While the TV screen remains the dominant media option for Americans, accounting for just under 5 hours per day¹, disability representation across broadcast, cable and streaming programming remains remarkably low. 

This, in turn, limits the opportunity for brands to be present in disability-inclusive content. In fact, Nielsen’s latest Attitudes on Representation study² found that 34% of respondents said they don’t believe there’s enough content that represents them on TV. 

The upside of digital connectivity and new media channels

Comparatively, Americans spend an average of 3 hours and 23 minutes with their computers, smartphones and tablets per day³, which provide access to an even greater variety of media choice, including content that they believe better represents them. Newer media options, including social media, offer greater inclusivity, which provide brands with more opportunities to embrace and show support for the disabled community by being present in the inclusive content that isn’t available in traditional media channels.

Sources:

1. Q4 2022 National TV panel; time spent includes live TV, time-shifted TV, TV connected device usage.
2. Nielsen Attitudes on Representation on TV Study, April 2022
3. Q4 2022 National TV panel

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Creating great content is only half the battle. In our current age of media hyper-fragmentation, it may be even less than that. For broadcasters, publishers and platforms, the real trick is making sure your audience can find the right content at the right time, every time. And the single greatest asset in your arsenal is the metadata that powers content discovery. 

No matter how many new media channels emerge, which viewing format is most popular or how large content libraries grow, granular metadata should be part of your content distribution strategy. It’s critical to improving discoverability and enhancing your content across platforms, languages and locations.

Here are three ways to build a scalable, resilient video content distribution strategy. 

1. Standardize your metadata 

As of June 2023, Gracenote video data notes there are just over 1 million video titles across linear and streaming channels in the U.S. alone. Now multiply that by the number of different countries and languages those platforms support. And then, while you’re at it, further multiply all of those titles by the metadata they generate: each movie or episode’s cast list, run time, plot, genre, crew, etc. It’s a staggering amount of information.

Without standardization, platforms in every region could organize this data in their own unique way, forcing international distributors to change how their content is tagged, stored and shared every time if they want it to remain searchable. This tedium blocks both content distributors and providers’ ability to scale their content across different languages and platforms and limits the capacity to enhance their metadata strategy beyond the basics, leading to a suboptimal discovery experience for audiences. 

One way to achieve metadata standardization is to rely on universal content identifiers. These IDs are persistent tags that identify a piece of content in a way that works across all platforms and screens. They link basic metadata like titles, imagery descriptions and cast details, but they also can link to much more advanced data sets like content mood, theme, scenario or even personalized imagery tailored to the viewer’s interests. 

When standardized, these universal IDs can sort, display and contextualize a piece of content across the entire entertainment ecosystem. There are companies, like Gracenote, that will standardize—and then enrich—your metadata for you. This standardization and enrichment ensures interoperability and automates and improves how your metadata gets tagged and sorted based on deep taxonomies, effectively scaling your content’s discoverability. 

When assessing metadata partners, you should look for the following: 

• Cross-platform content availability to ensure your content is searchable wherever your audiences are 
• Global dataset with local coverage that helps your content feel relevant no matter the language or region 
• API delivery for near real-time metadata updates
• Unified data schema to ease metadata onboarding across different partners

2. Stay local, think global 

We are living in an era of widespread globalization of media. Global media is nothing new, but it has taken on a different flavor in the past few years. For example, let’s say a show is gaining traction in Japan. It’s in Japanese and created for Japanese audiences.  A fan of the show takes a snippet and turns that into a meme which then goes viral on social media. Suddenly, there are people around the world interested in watching the show. The content hasn’t changed, but the audiences’ context for why they’re interested has. 

This has been happening for years on streaming services, and, as streaming and connected TV (CTV) viewership continues to rise, so will this trend. There will be a growing opportunity—and even expectation—around ensuring content promotion is globally accessible without losing out on local relevance. This concept is called “glocalization.” So, the way our aforementioned show is promoted in Japan would likely be much different than how it should be promoted in Sweden or Mexico.

Creating a scalable content distribution strategy means ensuring global content is readily available while prioritizing regional nuances and preferences in promotion and discovery.

Universal IDs and the metadata they support let you set your content up for multi-region and multi-language opportunities by creating metadata consistencies from the outset. This lets discovery platforms focus on building compelling experiences for your audience, rather than wrangling the underlying data sets. 

3. Prioritize portability

Europe is forecasted to have over 4 billion IoT connections by 2025. The average U.S. household has about 22 connected devices, which is roughly six devices per person. By the end of 2023, nearly 90% of internet users in Southeast Asia will also be smartphone users. Clearly, audiences are hopping from screen to screen every day. That means, in 2023, a scalable distribution strategy should allow content to be discovered across any media type.

Once again, universal IDs and standardized metadata let you capitalize on multimedia opportunities by doing three things particularly well: 

1. Seamless integration across different platforms 
2. Speed up the distribution process by working across the full media ecosystem
3. Fuel personalized imagery and descriptions tailored to any platform

For example, the same content metadata that powers search and discovery for video content on a mobile device or smart TV could also power video discovery in the car, as touchscreens for rear and passenger seats have become the norm in new models. It even works across audio listening. While content metadata powers music and podcast search and discovery across streaming platforms, music listening on smart TVs, smart speakers or in connected cars, can all be powered by the same metadata.

Ultimately, your content distribution strategy is only as strong as your metadata strategy. When you standardize and elevate your metadata, you ensure your content is easier to discover for more people. 

For more ways to improve your metadata strategy, get to know the Gracenote ID.

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To do so, the performers plan to get intense with audiences by leaning into energetic moods and shifting away from the neutral moods that were more prevalent last year. In total, seven of this year’s 37 songs fall into the “energizing” mood category¹—the most prominent primary mood descriptor² across all of the entries. While we saw an equal number of “energizing” entries last year, this year’s contest will feature more songs with other energetic undertones.

Last year, for example, “yearning” was the most prevalent mood (there were nine) among the song entries; this year, there are just four. Similarly, there are no songs with a “sensual” primary mood descriptor in this year’s contest; last year, there were five. There are also twice as many songs with “excited” and “defiant” as the primary moods: four and two, respectively.

The shift toward more energetic moods bodes well for competitors, as half of the 24 winning songs between 1998 and 2022 were characterized by five moods at the more energetic side of the spectrum: “energizing,” “excited,” “fiery,” “rowdy” and “urgent.” And in the last decade, seven of the last 10 winning songs have expressed at least one of these moods. This year, 19 of the 37 entries express “energizing,” “excited,” “fiery,” “rowdy” or “urgent” as their main mood.

Of these five moods, “fiery” is the most common among winners since 1998, including last year, when “Stefania,” Ukraine’s entry from hip-hop band Kalush Orchestra, took the top prize. “Stefania” was one of three entries with a “fiery” primary mood.

Dana International’s win for Israel in 1998 with her song “Diva” was the first entry with a “fiery” primary mood descriptor to take the top prize. Her win also kicked off a trend that we’ve seen hold through 2022: 14 winners have featured moods at the more energetic end of the spectrum. Israel’s win in 1998 was also more in tune with the pop music of the time—a shift that has carried through most of the contests in the years that followed.

Comparatively, the winning songs of the first 42 editions of the contest, which started in 1956, were less energetic: Only four of the 45 winners (there were four co-winners in 1969) during this period were songs with more energetic moods. The primary moods of the others had average and below-average energy levels.

In total, this year’s entries cover less emotional range than last year, as the songs cover just 12 primary moods—down from 15 in 2022. Entries are more heavily stacked in the positive and energetic areas of the mood spectrum, which puts more songs in contention to win from a recent historical perspective. In looking at the top 10 contenders to win, based on the odds at eurovisionworld.com, seven exhibit one of the five moods that have dominated in recent years, suggesting that history will likely repeat itself when the final vote is tallied following this year’s contest.

This year’s contest starts May 9, 2023. The semi-finals are May 11, and the final is May 13.

Notes

¹ As categorized by Nielsen’s Gracenote music data
² Gracenote’s Sonic Mood Descriptors feature 25 level one mood descriptors. These descriptors indicate the most prominent and distinct elements in a song, such as rhythm, melody, and timbre. Combined, they provide a “mood profile” of a song, which indicates the primary mood and strength.

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Somewhat surprisingly, fewer marketers said they would make the knee-jerk reaction of reducing ad spending than leaning into other strategies. Globally, marketers would rather shift spending to digital channels and prioritize performance-based marketing.

For marketers, the uncertain economic outlook adds to the complexity that they’re already facing as they weigh new marketing channels while still lacking confidence in measuring the ROI of their total spending. Specifically, only 53% of global marketers, on average, express being either extremely or very confident in their ability to measure the ROI of their total spending.

In aggregate, marketers’ lackluster confidence in ROI measurement poses two challenges. First, a shift in marketing strategy that prioritizes performance marketing could impede marketers’ ability to deliver on their top objective for the year ahead: new customer acquisition. And on the flipside, lackluster confidence in full-funnel measurement could hamper marketers’ ability to gauge the holistic impact of their marketing if they stay the course and leverage all channels as planned.

The economy might be less of a challenge in actuality, as global marketers do expect their advertising budgets to increase this year, albeit less so than a year ago: 64%, on average, expect their ad budgets to grow this year, with 13% expecting increases of 50% or more. And as has been the case in recent years, marketers plan to continue favoring digital channels, with social media, online video, online display and search ranking highest for planned spending increases. And given the rising popularity of streaming among TV audiences, 84% of marketers globally say they now include streaming in their marketing mix, which adds further complexity to measurement. 

That complexity is reflected in the perceived ROI of streaming among marketers, as only 49%, on average, believe streaming is either extremely or very effective as a marketing channel. The skepticism isn’t surprising, given the relative newness of streaming en masse and the unique requirements associated with measuring it. But it’s not the only channel marketers struggle to validate—it’s just the newest. In fact, perceived effectiveness is relatively low across nine different digital channels.

There are many possible reasons for the muted level of ROI measurement confidence, such as declining use of marketing technology (martech), incomplete audience data, reduced investment in martech and lackluster campaign effectiveness data. Regardless of the reason, however, the survey results highlight a significant accountability gap—one that’s rooted in the complexity associated with cross-media measurement. And the complexity intensifies with every new channel that audiences engage with.

The historically different methodologies for linear and digital measurement underscore the difficulty in comprehensive cross-media measurement. And arriving at comparable metrics across a range of channels becomes increasingly arduous when measurement is channel specific. For example, 62% of marketers report using multiple tools for their cross-media measurement needs, with 14% using for or five. That will make arriving at comparable, cross-media measurement—something that 71% of marketers say is extremely or very important—very difficult, especially as new channels emerge.

Strategically, marketers have one North Star: the audience. Through that single lens, marketers have all the guidance they need to develop effective media strategies. In an increasingly fragmented digital landscape, quality audience data is at a premium—it’s also something that only 23% of marketers say they have access to. Yet without the right audience data, or the technology necessary to measure the effectiveness or impact of their spending, many marketers will remain ill-equipped to navigate where to allocate their spending and measure the outcomes that follow.

For additional insight, download the 2023 Nielsen Annual Marketing Report.

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The need for consistent measurement in a digital-first landscape

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Few changes in the media industry are as defining as audiences’ relationship with television. And the latest evolution capturing audiences’ attention is streaming services, smart TVs, and the content they support. In the U.S. alone, Americans watched 19 million years worth of streaming content in 2022.

So, naturally, brands have adjusted their media strategies: 84% of global marketers say they include streaming channels in their media plans.

The catch? Less than half believe this spending is effective.

In December of 2022, we surveyed 1,524 global marketing professionals to understand how they feel about changing viewing behaviors, the rise of streaming and CTV, and solutions for tracking and proving campaign impact.

Here are four key survey insights:

1

Recession or not, marketers expect ad budgets to grow

Despite 69% of global marketers saying economic conditions had a big impact on planning, 64% expect their budgets to grow.

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2

Streaming is the future, but value remains unclear

84% of global marketers include streaming in their media planning. Less than half, however, view this spending as effective.

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3

ROI confidence is lowest across digital channels

Only 54% of marketers are confident in ROI measurement across digital channels.

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4

Multiple measurement tools could be hurting confidence

62% of marketers use multiple measurement solutions to achieve a comprehensive look at marketing performance, which may be contributing to the lack of confidence.

Insight #1

Digital spend edges out other channel investments

For marketers, 2023 was assumed to be an uncertain year, with 69% surveyed for this report saying that the economic conditions had an impact on their planning.

Still, 64% expect their ad budgets to increase this year, with 13% even expecting increases of 50% or more. Much of that growth can be attributed to CTV and streaming.

Anticipated budget changes of 50% or more throughout the year

Anticipated CTV/OTT spending aligns with global trends we’ve been tracking.

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In the U.S., 2022 digital video ad spend was up 171% from 2020. 

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Across Puerto Rico, Mexico and Brazil, digital ad spend increased 228%* between 2021 and 2022 for a total of US$24.5 billion, with 58%  (US$14.2 billion) allocated to digital video.

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In France, Denmark and the U.K., internet-based video spend increased from US$2.3 billion in the first three quarters of 2020 to US$4.2 billion USD in 2022.

*The data reported is derived from the increased coverage of our Ad Intel measurement, which shows greater visibility of actual spending on digital vehicles. (1) Digital activity reporting in Brazil starts in January 2022. (2) PPP and social activity reporting in Puerto Rico starts in May 2022.

Insight #2

Global ad budgets lean into CTV

The increased spend across online video reflects audiences’ shift to streaming in particular.

In the U.S., Americans watched more than 19 million years’ worth of streaming content in 2022.

In Mexico, streaming grew to account for 15.2% of total TV usage as of December 2022.

In Thailand, streaming content reaches more than 50% of the TV audience.

In Australia, 70% of people 14 and older say they use the internet to stream video.

1 Nielsen Streaming Content Ratings and Nielsen National TV panel
2 The Gauge Mexico
3 Thailand Cross-Platform Ratings
4 Australia Consumer and Media View, Q4 2022

Naturally, global marketers are refining their media spend: On average, 32% report allocating 40%-59% of their budgets to CTV, and nearly one-fifth (19%) report shifting 60%-79%.

Global ad budgets are shifting to CTV

Zenith Media forecasts that global online video ad spending will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.8% through 2025 to account for 30% of the overall ad market. The company expects advertising on subscription video on demand (SVOD) services to grow at a CAGR of 27.9% to reach US$13.1 billion by 2025.

This is massive momentum. And yet, according to global marketers, the perceived effectiveness of their  CTV/streaming investments is just 49%.

Perceived effectiveness of digital spending by channel

Our recommendations

1

Beware of underinvesting on brand equity

Marketers are always asked to do more with less, even without threats of a recession. The economic uncertainty, however, adds pressure to protecting brand equity and sharpens the need for efficient, targeted and measured ad spending. Marketers may just have less budget to do it all.

If that wasn’t hard enough, there’s another big consideration: Most brands were already under-spending—by a median of 50%— and losing opportunities to achieve their maximum ROI in 2022. Reducing spending more could hurt ROI even further. It may also have a negative impact on marketers’ top objectives for 2023: customer acquisition and brand awareness.

Top marketing objectives for the 2023

In digital channels where engagement is rising, under-spending is even higher. For example, May 2022 data from Nielsen’s Predictive ROI Database showed that 66% of global media plans were under-invested for digital video. But marketers that close the spending gap and optimize their digital video investments can improve ROI by a median of 51%.

Rampant underspending is preventing maximum ROI

Digital videoDisplaySocialTV

2

Embrace a comparable measurement mindset

Audiences have spoken: Digital video—in all of its forms—is the future of how audiences will engage with content. This shift calls for transformative change in measurement. Marketers know how important comparable metrics are to understand the effectiveness of their ad spending, but they’re still too reliant on tools that give only a limited view of performance. To keep pace with the industry’s future, marketers need tools, solutions and metrics that are media-agnostic.

Impressions, for example, are universally applicable across ads, content and platforms. And subminute measurement, which produces individual commercial metrics, brings linear TV and digital video measurement closer to how digital campaign performance is measured.

On average, 62% of marketers find it hard to know where to use their ad budgets to reach specific audiences. Even more (69%) agree that digital media and audience fragmentation poses significant challenges to reach their target audiences.

Difficulty with OTT/CTV advertising measurement

GlobalAPACEMEANorth AmericaLatin America

To be the transformation that marketers want and finally achieve comparable cross-media measurement at the individual level, marketers should prioritize solutions that are focused on delivering measurement that is media agnostic.

3

Increase ROI by reaching more of your target audience

Understanding how campaigns are performing in near real time should be the way forward on the quest for maximum ROI. We hear this a lot: Reach more of the right audience and your ROI will increase. There’s more truth to this statement than many people might realize.

In 2022, Nielsen conducted a study involving 15 brands and 82 digital campaigns in the U.S. to verify the correlation between target reach and campaign ROI. When we combined in-flight target measurements from Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings and outcome metrics from Nielsen Attribution, we found one clear truth: Ads that best reached their intended audience generated significantly higher ROI than those that didn’t.

Tracking the relationship between targeted ads and ROI

The graph above shows three distinct performance clusters with each bubble representing data for one vendor, for one month, on one campaign.

This study revealed key learnings about targeted reach:

Increased campaign reach raises costs and does not guarantee higher campaign ROI

Increased targeted reach will improve campaign ROI

Advertisers can use reach analysis to better understand which audiences to target

Focusing on the most valuable audiences improves efficiency and drives higher ROI

Honing campaign reach is a critical ROI lever. To stave off the complications of fragmented channels and viewerships, marketers need to prioritize measurement solutions that cover all platforms and devices, with near real time insights, so they can capitalize on opportunity and drive impact from the beginning.

About this report

This is the fifth annual marketing report Nielsen has produced. It’s also the second to be global. The report leverages survey responses of marketers across a variety of industries whose focus pertains to media, technology and measurement strategies. For this report, we engaged 1,524 global marketing professionals who completed an online survey between Dec. 7, 2022, and Dec. 21, 2022.

In terms of seniority level, we engaged global brand marketers at or above the manager level. These managers work with annual marketing budgets of US$1 million or more across the auto, financial services, FMCG, technology, health care, pharmaceuticals, travel, tourism and retail industries.

Here are the corresponding sample distributions by region. Please keep these sample sizes in mind when reading and interpreting the charts in this report.

Respondents by Region

• APAC: 386 respondents
• EMEA: 374 respondents
• North America: 402 respondents
• Latin America: 362 respondents

Total: 1,524

The post 2023 Nielsen Annual Marketing Report appeared first on Nielsen.

For the past two years, Nielsen Annual Marketing Report global surveys show that as marketers continue to grow their ad spend across digital channels, podcasts, social media and native advertising attract the biggest increases. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) forecasts that podcast advertising will exceed $4 billion by 2024. eMarketer predicts that U.S. marketers will spend $7 billion on influencer marketing in 2024, up from $5 billion in 2022. 

It makes sense. These channels provide the potential to deliver huge impact with smaller spend when compared to traditional media—an appealing proposition at any time, but particularly now as budgets get stretched against the backdrop of global economic uncertainty. With the perfect podcast spot, your brand can feel like a vetted solution to its hyper-targeted audience of food-obsessed entrepreneurs looking for an easier way to ship their new small-batch hot sauce. Of course, the devil is in the details.

In our 2023 Brand Lift Drivers report, we shared research on tailoring emerging media creative to get more value. The next piece of the puzzle is ensuring your measurement strategy captures the complete picture of performance. 

While we’re no longer in the wild west days of influencer, sponsored content or podcast advertising, they are still relatively new channels. And with new terrain comes uncertainty. Historically, emerging media have had clear metrics for proving engagement and even conversion; brand-building measurement, however, has been more elusive. 

As these channels continue to solidify as key components of your marketing mix, it will be important to understand their impacts on the entire funnel. And that means nailing measurement for brand lift. 

The blockers for effective brand lift measurement

There are a few factors at play that make brand-building measurement hard for new and emerging media channels. 

• Channel inconsistencies 
  Podcasts, branded content and influencer marketing all have their own distinct set of metrics that, more often than not, don’t translate across channels. Views aren’t the same as listens, which aren’t the same as clicks. This makes it that much harder to get a 30,000-foot view of success as everything gets brought down to the channel level. 
• Siloed analysis
  Spending enough money with a single publisher or platform can unlock access to one-off brand lift studies. While helpful, these studies only capture what occurred within the confines of the vendor’s channel. That leaves you having to string together a series of ad hoc studies to create a patchwork view of performance. 
• Limited research
  While there are readily available industry benchmarks and best practices for established media channels, many working in emerging media are still flying blind. Nielsen’s research into brand lift factors for emerging media fills some of that knowledge gap. Still, the need—and expectation—for rigorous brand lift measurement in these channels will continue to grow as they prove durable marketing levers. 

The payoff of prioritizing upper-funnel insights 

The potential impact unlocked when you nail measurement for brand-building goals is huge, particularly for emerging media. 

Brand building wins deliver sales ROI

It’s been shown time and time again that investing in upper-funnel, brand-building goals drives lower-funnel returns. The 2021 Nielsen Brand Resonance Report found that increasing awareness and consideration by one point drives a 1% increase in future sales. And in 2022, we discovered that increasing awareness and consideration by 1% can also decrease short-term cost per acquisition by 1%. 

Investment at the top of the funnel is an investment for the full funnel. 

A universal metric reveals comprehensive performance  

To combat the complexities of each channel having its own set of performance metrics, look to a KPI that already works across all: Brand lift. This is a doubly helpful metric for those interested in emerging media spaces as they are particularly good at delivering on brand-building objectives. 

For podcast ads, branded content and influencer marketing, the average aided brand recall is over 70%, and the average brand sees gains in familiarity and affinity with the exposure. 

Consistency drives clarity

You’re potentially missing out on a compelling performance story when you don’t  track brand lift in a consistent way across platforms. It’s critical to understand, and quantify, the link between brand-building work and sales returns. What’s more, without consistent, holistic measurement, you may also lose out on insights into which investments are working and what’s missing the mark—no matter how new the channel is.  

Eventually, emerging media becomes established media and a new class of channels crops up. It’s the circle of marketing life. That means marketers should prioritize understanding the full-funnel impacts of these emerging channels, and those that come after, to remain agile and ready to drive as much impact as possible. 

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