1. News content is uniquely valued, and ads within benefit from the positive halo
People watching the news are engaged with the content because they’re looking to be informed. Even when the story being covered might be seen as “heavy,” the topic is important to viewers, so the brand favorability of ads during those segments actually goes up.
2. News source matters more than the story
Credibility of the news source matters. We found that 3-in-5 people feel that brands should vet the news source before advertising.
In fact, the news source matters more than the individual news story itself. Ads on a high-quality, trusted and well-respected news source led to increased research intent (+25%), brand favorability (+21%), and purchase intent (+21%).
3. Ads in news are effective across all genres
Regardless if someone is watching entertainment news, sports news, or hard news, ads were impactful across content-types.
Notably, display and video ads pull different but important levers for advertisers. While video ads are more effective at driving brand favorability, display ads tend to drive increased curiosity and research intent.
4. Ad message is key when advertising in different types of news
In hard news – which generally involves timely, important and consequential topic areas – a more direct, product focused ad message led to higher brand impact, with favorability up +10%, purchase intent up +7% and research intent up +5%.
Conversely, in race and culture news, a storytelling approach worked better for elevating favorability (+11%) and purchase intent (+10%). Even more, this approach made people feel more connected to and more trusting of the brand.
In Summary
Advertisers who avoid news content are missing out on a curious audience that is actively looking to learn about the world around them. To effectively advertise within news environments, brands should:
- Seek out trusted news sources
- Diversify their buy to include video and display
- Tailor the advertising message to the type of news in which it will appear
With this strategy in place, advertising in news content is key to delivering on campaign KPIs.
More simply put, No News is Bad News.
Source: Disney/MAGNA “No News is Bad News”, 2021