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Determining Optimal Creative Strategy for Better Sales Outcomes

Background

Group Black, one of the largest collectives of Black-owned media and diverse creators, provides solutions that accelerate inclusive spending by brands. 

Group Black wanted to know whether their creative influenced attention and whether the 15- or 30-second cutdowns better predicted sales outcomes. 

Many studies have shown the purchasing power of Black consumers, while also demonstrating the value Black creators have in influencing all types of consumers. By 2024, spending power among Black consumers is expected to reach $1.8 trillion, compared with $971 billion in 2010

A study the organization conducted with Nielsen found that Black lifestyle creators delivered 10.5x more media value than non-Black creators. And Black audiences are the most likely to seek out content made by diverse creators. Despite this, Black creators earn 35% less than their white peers, according to a 2021 study from MSL U.S. and the Influencer League. 

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Group Black is currently collaborating with Realeyes to further demonstrate the advertising effectiveness of working with Black creators and to co-create a measurement system for its customers that added a layer of attention and emotion data to every test. 

The creatives featured athletes from a HBCU sports team, both together as a team and as individuals, discussing how the brand inspired confidence in them so they could perform their best. 

One of Group Black’s clients, a beauty brand, wanted to test three sets of creative that each had a 15-second and 30-second ad to demonstrate the power of Black creatives and to understand how the two formats influenced their audiences. 

Key Takeaways

  • Ads featuring the teams performed better overall than the individual ads 
  • The 15-second versions scored better in ad liking and persuasion power 
  • The 15-second versions, with improved early branding, are likely to deliver more efficient sales effects 

Solution

Group Black partnered with Realeyes to use its patented and award-winning PreView attention measurement technology to determine if the creatives influenced attention and which of the 15- and 30-second cutdowns achieved better sales outcomes. 

PreView uses the front-facing camera of opted-in African-American participants across several age groups as they experience ads at home on their own devices. The study tracked in-context breakthrough, measured by attentive seconds, reactions, and brand equity determined by a post-view survey.  

Group Black wanted to know whether their creative influenced attention and whether the 15- or 30-second cutdowns better predicted sales outcomes. 

Results

Group Black and Realeyes identified several key learnings, which will help Group Black’s beauty client and other clients approach their creative and media strategy more effectively. 

Attentive Seconds 

The 30-second team creative captured the most attentive seconds. Overall, the 30-second ads garnered more attentive seconds, which measure the average seconds with eyes-on screen while the ad placement is fully visible.  

However, they did at a near-equal or lower percentage compared to their increased run time. The greatest difference in similar creative were the ones that featured Bella, whose 30-second version had 46% increase in attentive seconds while representing an 76% increase in time. 

Table 1 Ad-Duration vs Attentiveness

All ads prompted higher than 50% brand recognition, all of which were at least 19% higher than norms. The Bella 30-second ad has the highest brand recognition, yet the 15-second one had the lowest, demonstrating that simply cutting an ad to a shorter length will not necessarily produce similar results.   

Two of the 15-second ads had a higher brand recognition than the lowest-performing 30-second ads, reinforcing that duration does not necessarily mean more brand recognition.  

Further demonstrating this point, the 15-second ads made the most of the time they captured attention through having a higher brand recognition efficiency, which measured brand recognition percentage per Attentive Second. 

Ad Recall 

The longer ads had lower recall (38%) than the shorter ads (46%). Interestingly, the 30-second team ad has the lowest ad recall percentage of any ad, even though it commanded the most attentive seconds. It also contrasted with the 15-second team video, which had the highest ad recall of all ads. 

...simply cutting an ad to a shorter length will not necessarily produce similar results

Table 2 Longer vs Shorter Ads

 Persuasion 

When viewed to the end, 15-second ads are better liked and reported to be more persuasive. All of the ads were more persuasive than the norms and the Bella ads and 15-second team ads had higher engaged times than the norm. Once again, Bella creative stands out as creating the strongest engagement.  

Outlook

Going forward, Group Black’s client plans to increase its 15-second exposure for efficiency, including testing all 15-second Instagram and Facebook videos as paid media. It will still use a 15- and 30-second blend for its campaigns as each length provides different benefits. 

Further research could explore the drivers of the likeability and ability to communicate the brand’s values and attributes. 

It will continue to work with Realeyes to conduct additional research to explore content’s ability to communicate product attributes is recommended on campaign extensions. 

    ... creating a proprietary and culturally representative creative database comprised of hundreds of Group Black-produced ads and carefully selected competitive data.

    Group Black and Realeyes are also in the process of creating a proprietary and culturally representative creative database comprised of hundreds of Group Black-produced ads and carefully selected competitive data. 

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