ESPN Touts Effectiveness of Commercials Seen Out of Home

ESPN, which is getting its out-of-home viewership included in many of its advertising deals, is pointing to new research that shows commercials viewed in bars, health clubs and other venues are as effective as those seen in living rooms.

When Nielsen includes out-of-home viewing in its ratings, ESPN get the biggest lift, a total day 8.5% gain in people two years old and up. Monetizing those extra viewers became a priority a couple of years ago.

The latest data shows that those extra viewers are valuable to ESPN and its sponsors.

Out of home conjures up images of people with their backs turned in bars, but that's not really what it is, said Cary Meyers, senior VP fan and media intelligence at ESPN. People are intensely engaged when they're watching sports and absorb the ads too. There's just constant awareness of one's surroundings. Even if peripherally they're being exposed, people just process them, he said.

If you look at the data by location, there is little variability as far as how effective ads are. It's not surprising. It's great to see substantiation now.

In fact, ads in some out-of-home locations are even more effect that those seen by couch potatoes sitting on their sofas. Those locations include gyms and people in transit in buses and trains watching on mobile devices.

The research was part of long running surveys by Nielsen Brand Effect, now Phoenix Brand effect that tracked ad memorability, brand recall and message recall. Questions about where the viewer was when he or she saw the ad were added recently to the studies.

The research found that out-of-home viewers were 91% as likely to recall the content of an ad 24 hours after natural exposure as in-home viewers.

Of those that recalled the content, out of-home viewers were 97% as likely to recall the brand.

Of those that could recall the content and the brand, out of home viewers were 96% as likely to recall the message.

Meyers notes that media buyers are very familiar with the Brand Effect research, and that by and large they seem to be buying it.

There's head nodding. I think there's an understanding that sports is just so unique, Meyers said.

It's a real phenomenon for us. Most advertisers are consumers of sport in out-of-home locations at some point, they certainly are aware that when they're there there's still recognition of and attention to ads in a way that's consistent with what you see among in-home views.

Now both the viewership is measureable and the effectiveness of the ads is quantified.

We're going to continue touting this story. We think we're doing a good job knocking down perceptual walls. There's been intuition that this might be the case, but now we've got empirical data to substantiate that, he said. These are not an insignificant number of viewers. And this is reinforcing a story that's already been heavily sold in in the last couple of year by the ESPN folks.

LINK:	https://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/espn-touts-effectiveness-of-com...
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