Talk to me: new research shows the effectiveness of voice-enabled ads

When given the choice, consumers may want to actually talk to your brand, rather than simply see them or hear from them. A new research study with Instreamatic, Pandora, TuneIn, MFour Mobile Research, and Mindshare USA shows the strength of voice-enabled advertising to reach consumers.

In the study, voice-enabled ads, both short-form and long-form, scored higher with participants across metrics such as consumer persuasion and brand recall versus other ad formats including display banner ads, video ads, and audio ads with banners. The results support other scientific research that two-way dialogues are more memorable than single stimuli. [1]

When looking at the perceptions around short-form voice ads versus long-form ones, both were rated by consumers as the most “helpful” and “exciting” against the other ad formats measured. That said, long-form voice ads were more likely to be described as “interesting” (65%) and “helpful” (52%) versus short-form ones — a metric that points back to the well-known opportunities in longer form storytelling.

“With voice-enabled advertising, brands have the opportunity to create a two-way dialogue with their audiences,” says Stas Tushinskiy, Instreamatic CEO. “There’s real power in being able to engage your consumers that way.”

The study leveraged Instreamatic’s voice AI technology, testing an advertiser’s ads across the voice and audio space with audio leaders such as Pandora and TuneIn, and was conducted in partnership with MFour Mobile Research.

“With every changing medium and evolving piece of technology, we always start by asking how this can help brands bring their purpose to life and bring their audiences value,” says Art Zambianchi, Executive Director, Mindshare USA. “The research shows that there’s opportunity here for marketers to engage their consumers in a different way, and create provocative work in this medium.”

Some of the other notable insights from the research include:

• Long-form voice ads drove better brand recall for women versus men (87% versus 70%).
• So did short-form voice ads — but with less of an extreme difference (83% versus 72%).
• That said, men were more likely than women to rank long-form voice ads as more helpful (58% vs. 48%), as they were with short-form voice ads also (51% versus 41%).
• While people ages 18–34 had better brand recall from voice-enabled ads versus the other ad types, there was also a lot of success with people ages 35 and up — who actually found the voice-enabled ads even more persuasive than the younger group.

Methodology:

The research was fielded in October 2019, via consumer panel Surveys On The Go®, by MFour. Over 1,000 people were surveyed, ranging from ages 13 all the way to 65+. Survey panelists were placed into different test groups and compared and contrasted a number of different ad formats, including the Instreamatic voice-enabled ads, and provided their feedback on the ad experience.

About Instreamatic:

Instreamatic is a voice AI infrastructure for marketing. The company provides an end-to-end solution for managing, measuring and monetizing voice-enabled advertising including a programmatic Voice Ad Exchange for assisting clients with advertising sales. Founded in 2015 with services focused on digital audio and ad sales, the company shifted its focus to establishing the first voice-enabled end-to-end solution for digital publishers and marketers. The company is headquartered in San Francisco.

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/instreamatic, Twitter https://twitter.com/instreamatic, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/instreamatic/

About Mindshare:

We were born in Asia in 1997, a WPP start up designed to make media exciting, fun and life changing. For the last 20 years our values of Speed, Teamwork, and Provocation have guided us in a world where everything begins and ends in media. We are the Cannes Lions Media Network of the Year 2019 and WARC Media 100 #1 Media Network 2020, with the top 3 most creative campaigns of the past year — so basically, statistically the best media agency in the world!

Our 10,000 people work with some of the world’s best brands and companies to challenge convention. In 116 offices across 86 countries we integrate brand and demand, ruthlessly focus on outcomes and create the unexpected. We manage $17.8bn in billings and are the largest media agency in GroupM, WPP’s Media Investment Management arm, which is the #1 media holding group globally with billings of $50bn (Source: COMvergence 2019).

Hear our stories (and join us) at www.mindshareworld.com and follow us on Instagram (@mindshare_usa), Twitter (@mindshare_usa), Facebook (facebook.com/mindshareusa), and LinkedIn (LinkedIn.com/company/mindshare).

[1] Source: Association for Psychological Science, “Balancing Speaking and Listening for Language Learning,” 2018