Media Q4 2022 Newsletter

Attention spans are decreasing – and demand for quick satisfaction and constant connectedness make it increasingly difficult to keep a consumer engaged. It's a challenge that will only increase over time as digital natives raised on short-form videos, character-limited social posts and the instant gratification of same-day delivery become a greater proportion of the shopper population.

In this environment, consumers are bombarded with countless ways to connect with brands. And they have also come to expect information that is personalized to their needs and wants. A particularly effective way to meet this demand is to align your ad targeting to the past purchasing and online behaviors of your target consumers.

Through this approach, you can ensure that your ads are highly relevant and that they both command attention and drive prospects closer to conversion. One recent IRI quantitative generational survey found that 42% of older baby boomers agreed that they pay more attention to ads and promotions that are based on their interests and shopping habits. And the percentages who respond better to highly targeted ads generally increased for younger generations, with 61% of young Gen Z respondents ages 14 to 17 agreeing with the same statement.

Succeeding in keeping consumer attention requires three key components:

1. Foundational Data
   
   Using actual purchase data enables you to avoid the key missteps that can occur in personalization efforts when relying on things like Internet and social media activity. Take the example of Sally, a Facebook user whose online activity makes it clear that she's an animal lover. That information led a brand to send her a sponsored ad for dog food. But information from her cash receipts paints a more accurate picture. Her purchases of cat food and cat litter – and no dog products – confirm that she is a cat owner. Ads targeting her for dog food are wasted impressions.
   
   Passively collected purchase data is also stronger and more accurate than survey data because research shows that people can't accurately recall what they purchased. Sometimes, respondents even base their responses on what they want you to perceive about them, not on their actual buying behaviors. In fact, research shows that claimed purchases are reported incorrectly as often as 40% of the time.
2. Targeting and Creative
   
   By leveraging audiences based on purchase data, brands can also successfully engage high-potential consumers that transcend their traditional customer base. Targeting for Burger King's plant-based Impossible Burger is just one example. While the average BK customer is a working-class male age 18 to 35 who is a foodie and convenience seeker, purchase-based audiences enable you to reach many high-propensity consumers outside of this demographic. Using IRI Verified Audiences, BK can also reach millions of actual consumers who are vegetarian, flexitarian and who have a history of buying organic and plant-based foods – targeting them with the right message at the right time
   
   Once you've used your purchase data to create focused target groups, it's important to follow up with mass personalized content that can engage and deliver an experience for short-attention-span consumers. This content needs to spark emotions and provoke a deeper connection. Some of the best tactics to achieve this with easily distracted consumers include short videos, humorous content, engaging infographics and other easily digestible visuals. TikTok-style short-form entertainment videos have become an important part of the social media and digital video landscapes. And a variety of platforms are offering growing opportunities for organic and influencer marketing, paid advertising and commerce using this approach. This is important since Gen Z continues to spend more and more time every day on YouTube and TikTok. While social commerce remains at an early stage of its development, it is certain to keep growing over time.
3. Optimization
   
   Quality data is also essential to optimize your campaigns in flight to achieve as much return on ad spend (ROAS) as possible. IRI's unrivaled and ever-increasing breadth and depth of data coverage (see the next story below) enables us to help clients optimize campaign tactics and improve media budget allocations to achieve ongoing incremental improvements.
   
   The use of dynamic personalized creative can offer 200% to 300% higher sales lift compared to non-personalized creative. And IRI Optimization used in conjunction with IRI purchase-based audiences can result in nine times the incremental lift versus campaigns that are not deploying the power of in-flight optimization or purchase-based targeting.
   
   A data-focused approach that effectively deploys purchase-based audiences, targets the right people at the right time with precision, optimizes campaigns in flight and features robust and accurate campaign measurement is essential in today's environment. In an era of short attention spans, you need to reach the right people with the right message. You need to know what's working and what's not. And you need to use that knowledge to continually improve your campaigns over time. IRI's omnichannel coverage and media solutions give you everything you need to do it effectively.

IRI's ProScores Audiences are so effective because they're built using real consumer purchase data from nationally representative households across all retail outlets. That data is then modeled across all 126 million U.S. households to identify those with the greatest propensity to buy that particular product.

ProScores Audiences are typically restricted to a highest-quality audiences and households with a real category purchase history. But sometimes brands want to loosen these parameters to target a larger – but still purchase-based and highly relevant – audience for mass campaigns.

IRI Max Reach Audiences makes it possible by allowing you to loosen the traditional penetration parameters within ProScores to match the needs of your campaign. Using this approach, you can reach anywhere from the actual product category's penetration (the traditional ProScores cutoff) to audiences as large as all of the 126 million households in the U.S. Whatever number of households you choose, IRI Max Reach Audiences will give you the most reliable purchasing audience at that scale.

You can also employ this methodology at any point in a campaign, whether you need to pace a longer campaign with additional media buys or want to geotarget at a larger scale. It's a great choice for higher-reach campaigns, awareness campaigns and major campaign pushes. It's also a great way to close out campaigns entering their final weeks with extra budget remaining, giving you the ability to hit a larger but still targeted audience as the campaign concludes.

If you have any questions or want to learn how to maximize the ROI on your media campaigns, please reach out to your IRI representative or IRImedia@IRIworldwide.com.