As the best performing asset classes of the past decade, silver and gold have been hot topics on the financial news scene.  But how widespread is the interest in this investment choice, and what do we know about the investors who do show interest in these precious metals?  To answer these questions we applied to investments the same behavioral research techniques pioneered by comScore for understanding consumer brands. 

As an initial gauge of interest, we looked at visitation to websites focused on precious metals.  We found that the number of unique visitors to these sites have exploded, with many experiencing double- and triple-digit percent growth.

We also took a look at these visitors’ demographic makeup.  Take for example Coinflation.com, a website that acts as a precious metals news aggregator as well as an up-to-the-minute silver coinage valuator.  A snapshot of their December 2011 visitation demographics shows a broad-based distribution with skews typical of investment sites: males, older, and higher household income.

_{Source: comScore Media Metrix (December 2011)}

We eventually came to the question: are these visitors actually willing to invest in silver and gold, or are they just researching their options and eventually decide against it?  To understand this, we applied comScore’s proven Share of Choice technique to various investment options.  As part of a prize drawing, a census-representative group of six hundred individuals were given the option of winning an equal value investment of their choice.  That is, they could win their choice of:

• U.S. Corporate Stocks/Bonds (companies of their choice)
• Non-U.S. Corporate Stocks/Bonds (companies of their choice)
• Treasuries (U.S. Savings Bonds, Treasury Notes, or Treasury Bills)
• Bank Money Market or Cash Deposit (financial institution of their choice)
• Silver/Gold (physical bullion or coin).

The results are very telling, with 29 percent choosing the Silver/Gold option.  With regards to gender, the ratio mirrored the above site visitation with 32 percent of men and 26 percent of women choosing the precious metals.  The makeup for household income on the other hand did not show the same pattern as the website visitation data, being more similar across groupings.  This may be because lower income individuals do not have the same degree of liquid investment money and so do not seek out financial information at the same rate as those with higher income.

But perhaps the most interesting distributions are those that reflect political and economic outlook.  In particular, political party affiliation demonstrated a strong trend, with choice for metals among independents being near the mean, Democrats and Greens indexing below, and Republicans and Libertarians indexing well above.

Percent Choosing Silver/Gold Option
By Political Affiliation*

_{* Which of the following best describes your political affiliation?}

Similarly, inflation expectation was a key driver.  The Silver/Gold option was chosen at a substantially higher rate by those who expected prices of staples such as food, gasoline, utilities and medicine to be higher a year from now.

Percent Choosing Silver/Gold Option
By Staple Price Expectations*

_{* What are your expectations for the prices of staples such as food, gasoline, utilities and medicine a year from now?
Compared to today will they be:}

The data also suggests that individuals are looking at precious metals for portfolio diversification.  In the study, only about 4 percent of individuals indicated they currently invest in silver and gold bullion/coins; compared to 64 percent who indicated that they currently invest in one of the above options or a savings account.  While the vast majority of current silver/gold owners continue to prefer that option, a quarter to a third of those holding other investments now also prefer silver/gold.  So move over “gold bugs”, you now have some company.

“Why do some of my ad campaigns drive offline sales while others don’t?” This is one of the most common questions I receive from our clients, and the answer often resides – at least in part – in the quality of creative used. For this reason, I’m doing a 5-part blog series outlining proven techniques for designing effective digital creative. In each post, I will outline one technique along with its supporting research and case examples. I hope you enjoy them and look forward to hearing your comments and questions.

Technique #1: Include traditional branding elements in your digital executions (AKA Teaching a New Dog Old Tricks)

Based on years of research in the traditional media space, we know that the inclusion of key branding elements – such as brand differentiating key messaging, new product/feature information, convenience demonstrations, competitive comparisons, superiority claims and explicit value statements – helps to increase the likelihood of the ad to drive sales. But can these same approaches be effective for digital creative?

A recently released analysis by comScore and dunnhumbyUSA reported that five out of every six online ad campaigns we analyzed showed a positive lift in offline sales and a median lift of 21 percent. These findings were based on matched comparisons of the offline buying of households exposed to the advertising versus households who were not exposed.

As an extension to this analysis, we coded the presence of the above mentioned branding elements in the creative used in the campaigns. A clear pattern emerged. The campaigns that garnered the highest offline sales lift used these traditional branding elements at a substantially higher rate than the ads with the lowest sales lift (64% vs. 25%). Even more striking, of the 17 percent of campaigns that exhibited no offline sales lift, not a single one utilized any of the branding elements. This strongly suggests that the increased use of traditional branding elements in digital advertising will significantly improve the odds (and magnitude!) of offline sales lifts.

Problem solved, right? Well, there are still two major obstacles to overcome. The first is that it isn’t always possible to effectively include some of these branding elements in digital advertising. Typical display advertising, for example, often doesn’t provide the same “real estate” as full-page print ads or the same exclusivity of temporal attention as television ads. This is certainly one reason why we have seen a much lower percentage of ads containing key branding elements in digital advertising compared to TV and print advertising (see below chart).

Interestingly, however, many new digital ad formats are helping to overcome this hurdle. Good examples are AOL’s Project Devil, a large format premium ad unit with interactive panels, and Expo Communications’ user generated video reviews, full-motion, full audio alternative to text-based feedback. Additionally, creative agencies are becoming very adept at incorporating key branding elements into even the most basic of display ad formats. At the end of this post are images drawn from some recent, strong examples of this evolving ‘minimalist’ art.

The second obstacle to incorporating traditional branding content is the fact that its presence alone cannot ensure success. This inherently means that not only should brands experiment with several iterations of an ad pre-launch, but they should also invest in creative pre-testing. Testing has proven that even the most minor changes in how the branding message is delivered – in both traditional and digital formats – can have a major impact on advertising performance, and certain selling propositions can defy classical classification and still be highly effective.

I’ll conclude with one of the most popular quotes from the “Father of Advertising,” Mr. David Ogilvy, “The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is test. If you pretest your product with consumers, and pretest your advertising, you will do well in the marketplace.” Even today, in a world where advertising has fragmented across platforms, his wisdom shines through. Marketers who place value in pre-testing have been able to truly leverage the power of digital as a branding medium that not only lifts sales online, but also in offline stores

Check back soon for my next post in this series, and feel free to send comments or questions to ffindley@comscore.com.

Examples of Traditional Branding Content in Display Advertising

Brand Differentiating Messaging

New Product/Feature Information

Convenience Demonstration

Competitive Comparison

Superiority Claim

Hello, my name is Frank Findley and I’m the VP Research at ARSgroup, which just this past week was acquired by comScore. ARSgroup is a leading communications research agency specializing in the measurement of advertising persuasion for TV and multi-media campaigns and helping many of the world’s largest brands in the consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, retail and entertainment industries optimize their advertising messages. ARSgroup’s ARS Persuasion methodology is one of the world’s most widely documented and independently validated predictive measures of the persuasive effectiveness of advertising creative.

For the last thirty years, ARSgroup has conducted numerous studies into the relative role of creative strength and media quantity in generating ad campaign sales responses. I thought you might be interested in some of the insights we’ve uncovered. One of the most interesting findings from this research is that the advertising creative is four times as important in determining sales outcomes as the amount of media spent. Said another way, what we say and how we say it plays an even more critical role than how often we say it.

This four-to-one ratio highlights the great leverage to be had in optimizing the creative. Even modest improvements in persuasiveness and message communication can yield sizeable improvements in sales per media dollar spent.

So what are some of the tips and techniques we have found for optimizing creative? Here are four that are especially pertinent to the e-commerce space:

1. Quantifying benefits. When making shopping and product decisions, people can have a hard time valuing the benefits presented. Quantifying these in terms they understand can lead to significantly higher results. Two simple examples are “20% lower prices” rather than “lower prices” and “2 days faster shipping” instead of “faster shipping”. It should be noted that these quantifications don’t have to be verbal or mathematical. The telecoms, for example, have had great success in using coverage maps to help consumers quantify the benefits of their 3G networks. These types of simple changes in copy can have impacts far in excess of the effort applied in finding and executing them.

2. Take advantage of multiple executions when communicating complex or higher order messages. Sometimes a message is too complex to be captured in a single creative execution. This is especially the case of lower CPM advertising like banner ads. One way to circumvent this obstacle is to take advantage of the frequency in a media plan by using multiple executions to break the complex message into smaller chunks. In the minds of the consumers, these smaller pieces get synthesized and elevated to the desired higher message. For example, take the blinded case of one company that wanted to communicate the higher level message that it is sustainability-focused. This was accomplished through multiple ads each focusing on a different “green” initiative the company undertook; implementation of a waste reduction program, gains in manufacturing energy efficiency, and reduced plant emissions. Consumers who saw any individual ad took away that chunk of the message. But consumers who saw all three ads synthesized the message pieces and translated them into the broader sustainability concept. (See Table 1).


Source: Seven insights from holistic campaign testing; Frank Findley, Quirk’s Marketing Review April 2008

3. Don’t forget the emotional content! Our research shows that the advertising campaigns which work the best create both emotional and rational connections with the consumer. When using rich media and video, it is often possible to include compelling emotional and rational content in the same execution. But if this is not possible, use rich media with sound and motion to connect emotionally and lower CPM formats to reinforce the easier-to-communicate rational messages.

4. Make the brand prominent. If the creative doesn’t link back to the brand, then the impact on sales will be missed. Therefore, it is important to prominently mention the brand verbally and visually. The best outcome is if the brand is perceived to be the hero of the action.