Kinetic outdoor Virtual Reality market research
Kinetic, the world’s largest planner and digital innovator of Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising, suspected the optimal figure for OOH advertising exposure was incorrect. In order to validate this view, Kinetic used our market research mobile platform to overcome the historical challenges of assessing exposure levels to OOH advertising. The study could not be conducted when advertising was in the field as people’s exposures cannot be tracked accurately. Additionally, a controlled study wouldn’t produce reliable results if exposures were forced, as opposed to incidental exposures to adverts in a real world context. The Mere Exposure Effect was therefore used to understand optimal exposure. It’s a psychological phenomenon where liking of stimulus over multiple exposures increases, and then decreases, resulting in a bell shaped curve. Identifying the peak would indicate the optimal exposure to OOH adverts and any subsequent exposures beyond this would give diminishing returns on investment.
Challenge outdoor industry’s outdated view of optimal adverting exposure
Measure incidental exposure to OOH adverts in real world context
Generate new OOH planning tool to optimise adverting effectiveness
Solution for ad effectiveness
Our mobile technology enabled respondents to be exposed to OOH ads in virtual reality. Street scenes were filmed in 360 video and new ads were overlaid onto poster sites using photorealistic CGI (Computer Generated Image). Using new ads ensured there was no residual effect of people having seen the ad previously. A total of 325 respondents took part in the study, with 8 groups exposed to between 2 and 16 street scenes, with each scene having one poster advert. Importantly, respondents were told that they were going to see street scenes and no mention of the advertising was made to them. They could look around the street scene, as a situation of a real world setting, and any exposure to the ads would be incidental. Respondents were then shown all 3 adverts, asked to look at these ads and respond (on a scale of 1 – 10) about how they made them feel. This was the key measure shown to elicit the exposure effect with advertising before.
Virtual reality adopted as a bespoke tool to measure OOH effectiveness
360 video street scenes with new poster adverts added using photorealistic CGI
325 respondents accessed survey via their mobile and cardboard VR viewers
Result
Respondents who saw the poster adverts rated those adverts more positively than adverts they had not seen, demonstrating that incidental exposure to advertising in VR had resulted in an exposure effect. Moreover, the pattern of responses across the exposures corresponded to a bell shape curve with the increase in emotional response to the advert increasing and then decreasing. As such, it was possible to ascertain a new value of optimal exposure frequency to advertising. This new value will help OOH advertisers plan more effectively so that clients can get a better ROI from OOH budgets.
New value for optimal exposure frequency in OOH advertising established
Researching OOH adverts in VR was proven to be an effective methodology
Outdoor adverting planning is now being optimised based on this new figure
Due to the ROI and impact on the OOH advertising industry, Kinetic have extended the use our VR technology on subsequent studies. A paper has been published in WARC which you can download below for detailed analysis and findings.