In advertising say less, communicate more.

A study by Kantar found only 15% of ads are absorbed quickly.

Three main reasons

Ads overstuffed with too many messages.
Ads with poor attribution back to the brand.
Creative not optimised for channel.

Overstuffed Ads
We’ve seen these ads. The ones where marketers expect it to be the Swiss Army knife of communications and carry everything the company has to say about its products and services.

Continuously ads with a single-minded message have been proven to outperform other ads (see pic).

And we see in across channels too. For example, in social media, ads with fewer than 80-90 characters per post has proven to be more engaging.

The most effective advertising achieves what Binet & Field referred to as Fame. These ads get people talking, appealing to the herd by leveraging network effects and critical mass – simple everyday conversation. Something most people can relate to, not a mix of loads of things that’s more difficult to chat about.

Single-minded ads also appreciate how integrated communication plans work, especially with search being universally available. Most searches are for when customers want find information efficiently or new and unknown products, not for brands they already know well. Leave the bulky information in a place that’s easy to find, but don’t unnecessarily overstuff you ads with this info.

Ads with a single message have almost twice the level of cut-through as ads with multiple messages.

Brand attribution
As we improve the measurement of attention to advertising, we are learning that showing the brand big and showing the brand often in an ad is important. This does not have to be blatant. Brands should be investing to build their distinctive assets and other heuristic devices through their advertising.

Ads that score strongly on branding have almost a 30% greater impact on sales performance.

Brand fit is also essential. Ads with strong brand fit are over twice as effective.

Good ads get the brand noticed.

Optimise Creative for Channel
This makes sense but it’s not always what we see, with some brands preferring a matching luggage approach across all their ads.

Campaigns should be consistent, but that doesn’t mean ads shouldn’t be designed for the environment that they are played out in. In fact, adapting ads by channel drives higher levels of attention, improving the relative performance of creative in the channel.

While this has cost implications, it makes the most of how and why a consumer is using different channels.

The more native the ad is to a channel, the more effective it is.