Greg Sterling says, “Mobile brand agency Kargo has published a study that argues “premium editorial” digital environments are more effective for brand ads than search or social media. The findings are based on a comparative study of ad visibility and recall.

One hundred smartphone owners were exposed to “premium editorial, social and search content in a live in-market test.” Participants were given “10 minutes within each environment to experience the content as they normally would in a use session.” Eye tracking and post-exposure surveys were used to measure reactions and later ad recall. The research was conducted in partnership with Nielsen.

A single unidentified publisher’s website was used as the editorial test site. Participants were exposed to their own social feeds, and a set of “cued search categories” was used to measure the efficacy of ad exposures in search results. It’s not clear if the ads tested across channels were similar or the same.

The study posed three main questions:

  1. How visible are ads in these different environments?
  2. How many ads are actually seen by the human eye in each environment?”.

Study: Ads in editorial stream beat search, social for visibility and recall

Marketing Land

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