Advertising go bang!

Do ‘big’ ads amplify the effect of ‘little’ ads? We were speaking at Ad:Tech Londonwith our friends from Inskin on Wednesday to answer exactly this question.

Inskin make highly engaging digital ad formats that really get noticed. But does the effect stop there, or does it reverberate throughout the rest of the media plan? We conducted an experiment to understand the effect of starting your campaign with a Big Bang (such as an Inskin ‘Pageskin’), and then following it up with more standard ordnance, such as MPUs.

The results are impressive. Not only do you get a lot of bang for your buck with Pageskins (about 15 times more aggregate attention than standard formats) but you also get a multiplier effect on attention to the subsequent MPUs. People were 39% more likely to notice MPUs if they had been preceded by a Pageskin, and 140% more likely to engage with the subsequent ads for more than a second. You can read about the effects in more detail here.

People are more likely to notice a second ad if they have actually looked at the first one. Digital media planners need to take a leaf out of the TV planners’ playbook, where campaigns are often commenced with a barrage of 30 or 60 second ads, and then followed up with 10 or 15 second cut downs, that are designed trigger memories of the initial ‘blockbuster’ execution. Going large with high impact ads doesn’t just create an impression initially but multiplies the effects of subsequent ads.

Just remember, once you have made it go bang, don’t look back.