Online Ads Not Working for You? Blame the Creative

Digital: Online Ads Not Working for You? Blame the Creative - Advertising Age - Digital

Something we've harped on for a long time over at WireSpring is the need for great content on your digital signage systems. Too often, people blame their network failures (and there have been many of these over the years) on cost management, technology problems, unwilling advertisers and dozens of other things, when in reality the real problem was that their content wasn't compelling, and consequently their network wasn't achieving its goals.

We're not alone in this problem, as the above-linked AdAge article explains:

It's bad creative that makes online advertising ineffective, so stop obsessing over targeting and placements, according to a study from online-ad-research group Dynamic Logic.

After analyzing the highest and lowest performers from its database of more than 170,000 online ads, the Millward Brown company determined that creative factors such as persistent branding, strong calls to action and even human faces -- and not super-targeted or high-profile ad placements -- make for better ad recall, brand awareness and purchase intent.

Simply put, an ad is only as strong as its weakest links, and according to the Dynamic Logic study, that weakest link is frequently the quality of the creative itself. Not planning, not placement, not measurement, but content.

Digital signage content producers and ad network owners need to keep this in mind when deciding how to apportion their budgets. Don't leave enough in for good creative, and you might be deploying a very expensive, very failure-prone network.