Full-screen interactive ads dominate standard, Rising Stars formats for recall, especially on smartphones
This year, US advertisers will increase spending on digital display advertising by 21.8% to $27.05 billion, and that figure will hit $47.35 billion by 2019. As the deluge of display ad dollars continues, advertisers must choose the optimal ad formats for cutting through the clutter, and recent research indicates that standard placements just don’t cut it anymore: Full-screen interactive ads are critical.
Digital Ad Recall Among US Internet Users, by Ad Format and Device, April 2015 (% of respondents)
When April 2015 research from Undertone conducted by Ipsos Connect examined digital ad recall across different formats and devices, full-screen interactive ads beat standard and Rising Stars units across the board. Smartphone campaigns had the biggest gap, with high-impact formats leading both standard and Rising Stars placements by around 20 percentage points each. Desktops exhibited the smallest difference, with full-screen interactive ads leading standard formats by 5 points and Rising Stars by just 3 points.
While past research has indicated that Rising Stars trump traditional ads, such formats performed similarly to standard units in the study. Undertone noted that this was likely due to the fact that respondents weren’t required to actually interact with ads, and that unless Rising Stars ads are expanded, they looked similar to standard display.
Brand Recall for Smartphone vs. Tablet Ads Among US Internet Users, by Ad Format, April 2015 (% of respondents)
The study also looked at brand recall on mobile devices and found a similar trend. On smartphones, full-screen interactive ads led the other two formats by around 20 percentage points each. On tablets, while high-impact units had a similar lead over Rising Stars, standard placements fared slightly better, trailing by 10 points.
Undertone’s research reconfirms an ongoing trend among industry professionals: Today’s attention-strapped consumers are driving a web design evolution, and digital advertisers must keep up.