Ace Metrix, a company that tracks television advertising effectiveness, found that out of the 35 tablet ads over the past year, Apple proved to be the winner of the most effective marketing campaign. The company looked at ads from Acer, HP, Blackberry, Samsung, Amazon, Motorola, and Apple, of course, among others.

What do you think makes an effective television ad? Please share your thoughts.

As Jack McKee, the company’s head of marketing explained to us, it calculates an Ace Score based on the data it takes data from surveys. The Ace Score, specifically, looks at the watchability and persuasion elements of an ad. This score helps advertisers understand and predict how effective their ads are and will be in the future.

Using this score, Ace Metrix found that while Apple was clearly the overall winner for its 5 ads this year, Samsung had the single most effective ad with its “Feel Free” ad promoting its Galaxy tablet.

McKee told us that Samsung borrowed some of Apple’s tactics with its winning ad by focusing on the features. He said that the company had tried to prove it had a better product than Apple did in its previous ads.

What’s especially interesting about this study is the fact that several of the tablet makers scored above normal. In fact, even HP, which recently announced that it was pulling out of the tablet space, showed a really strong marketing effort. The company actually aired more TV ads than any other tablet maker this year, but their marketing efforts couldn’t save the tablet.

The tablet space is extremely competitive and the marketing effort of these companies only reaffirms this notion.

“We rated over 1,300 ads in the tech category alone,” said McKee. “That is just an amazing amount of competition.”

He went on to say that he doesn’t foresee Apple losing its top spot going forward. Even with Steve Jobs’ resignation, he believes that Apple is very effective in demonstrating its products in a simple way that shows consumers how their lives could be better with their products.

As for the other tablet makers, McKee told us that they would have to increase their efforts if they really want to compete with Apple.

“When you’re out there with a specific message, that message has to keep pace with your competitor’s message,” he said. “You can’t just stick with your initial thought and think that it’s gonna work.”

He advises the others to experiment to find the right formula, but to move fast in the process.

"Online To Store research is transforming retail today based on the ability to test digital marketing during a specified period of time and measure exactly what happens to sales not only online through eCommerce, but possibly more importantly- in-store in the test markets," says Jay Bowden of the Google Retail Team. "Test and control has never led to greater clarity of online efficacy."

"This is the Holy Grail of advertising and marketing funding if you think about it," he adds. "You have read on this blog before about Google partnering with Retailers to learn exactly what a dollar spent online can do for in-store sales, well now a number of the tests have been completed and the results are in! Online advertising drives in-store sales!"

The other post from Google looks at a recent study from comScore, which shows that online advertising is on par with television advertising in growing retail sales of consumer packaged goods brands. Over 12 weeks, online ad campaigns with an average reach of 40% of their target segment successfully grew retail sales of the advertised brands by an average of 9%. It was only 8% for tv ad campaigns over 12 months.

"In 2008, Google commissioned a study with Harris Interactive among three CPG brands to compare the brand building effectiveness between traditional TV and online platforms," says Google on the CPG Blog. "Effectiveness was equated to impact and engagement."

"Identical traditional TV ads were shown on three distinct platforms: 1) on TV, 2) on a computer screen replicating a YouTube video environment, and on a computer screen replicating a click-to-play video embedded in content," Google explains. "The Harris Interactive results showed that :30 commercials on YouTube and embedded video ads performed at parity with TV. All three were on par with the ability to communicate key messages about the brand, strengthen likeability, and drive purchase intent."

The research discussed above is positive news for online advertising in general. In fact, it makes helps make the case for unification of offline and online advertising efforts.

"Television is becoming more like the web. Just as users click with their mouse to choose what’s most relevant to them on the web, viewers send signals about what they want to see on television with clicks of the remote control," says Dan Zigmond, Technical Lead for Google TV Ads.

Google analyzes data from set-top boxes, and looks at what channels they are tuned to on a second-by-second basis. Google uses tuning metrics like % Initial Audience Retained (%IAR) to see what percentage of the audience stays tuned through an entire ad.

"Many factors affect audience behavior, including the nature of the programming, the time of day, the day of week, and, of course, the personality of each viewer. But ads themselves also have an impact," says Zigmond. "By identifying which factors affect tune-away, we can focus in on how the audience reacted to the ad itself." It’s kind of like bounce rate for a web site.

Zigmond says Google is getting closer to matching the right ads to the right TV audience, and that they are able to offer advertisers better measurement and more accountability for their TV campaigns.

On another Google TV-related note, they are now providing a feature that makes it easier to produce your own ads through Adobe Premiere or Apple Final Cut Pro.

"For each of these software packages, we’ve prepared a settings preset file which, once imported, makes exporting a video in the correct format a snap," explains

Marek Jeziorek, Video Operations Manager for Google TV Ads. "These files are pre-programmed with the right settings to generate a video that complies with the Google TV Ads technical requirements."

Settings and preset files can be downloaded at this help center. There is of course more information on how to use them as well.

They used eye-tracking software to determine the circumstances for when online ads were actually seen by participants. Highlights of the study include:

- Within a half hour, magazines effectively delivered more than twice the number of ad impressions as TV and more than 6 times those delivered online

- Though TV doesn’t deliver as many ads per half hour as do magazines, net recall of TV ads was almost twice that of magazine ads; magazines in turn had ad recall almost three times that of Internet banner ads

- 85% of Internet ads served appeared on-screen and could be identified by brand

- Among web users, 63% of banner ads were not seen. Respondents’ eyes passed over 37% of the Internet ads and stopped on slightly less than a third

- For Internet ads, almost all net recall could be attributed to ads that were seen

- Internet video ads appeared much less frequently than banner ads, and their exposure skewed heavily towards young men. When they did appear they were twice as likely to be seen as banner ads.

"Our findings indicate that we need to learn more about how to engage Internet users with advertising content," said Rebecca McPheters, CEO of McPheters & Company.

This week Google launched some new templates for rich media and video display ads. Advertisers using paid search might want to consider looking into something like that.

In fact those Google ads even have some analytical advantage. They let you place various products with unique landing pages within one ad. You can then examine which ones are performing the best and make necessary adjustments to your campaign.

Interestingly enough, TV advertising seems to be complimenting online marketing efforts, driving traffic to the web. AdAge says nearly a third of search queries for brands studied are driven by offline ads, namely TV.

Marketers want better ways to measure their TV ads. Google, who launched "reach and frequency reports" for its own TV ad platform within AdWords last year, has now launched reach and frequency estimates within its forecasting tool.

"Now, you can get an idea of whether your campaign is likely to achieve your reach and frequency goals before your ad airs, allowing you to adjust your campaign to achieve your optimal reach and frequency before you spend a dime," explains Andrew Poon, Product Manager for Google TV Ads.

You can review estimates for total impressions, unique impressions, and average weekly frequency. This is the total impressions divided by unique impressions, showing you how many times a TV will display your ad, within the set of all TVs that display it at least once. To review reach and frequency estimates, simply:

1. Create a new campaign or edit an existing campaign
2. Click on "Calculate weekly estimates" on the "Set pricing" page
3. Look for the section called "Weekly Reach and Frequency Estimates"
4. View the average frequency and unique reach numbers
5. Make adjustments based on your target reach and frequency

With tightened marketing budgets all around, tools like this can greatly reduce wasted ad dollars. Furthermore, considering that offline advertising is driving online results, webmasters might not want to overlook the potential of such tools either.

 Google TV Ad Tracking Stats
(Photo Credit: Bp2.blogger.com)

Google continues to march down that Nielsen-busting road: This week Google announced that advertisers now have the ability to track the online impact of Google TV Ads with Google Analytics.

With this new feature advertisers using Google TV Ads can measure impressions delivered, the number of ad plays, the cost, and CPM. Nielsen, of course, has made its own roads into the online measurement roads and has been proactive about creating new, more dynamic ways to measure audiences beyond demographics and audience size.

But one thing, especially as Yahoo also becomes more aggressive with television network partnerships, the audience measurement game is officially a one-horse show no more.
 

 Google TV Ads Launches

Following a long period of beta testing, it seems Google wants to kick things off in a big way; on the Inside AdWords blog, Christian Yee wrote, "To celebrate our launch, for a limited time Google will cover the cost of creating your TV ad through our Ad Creation Marketplace, up to $2,000."

There are some catches, of course – the $2,000 would come in the form of credit, and eligible campaigns’ minimum average budgets must be $2,000 per week – but the thought counts for something.

It just remains to be seen if many people will take advantage of the offer.  The two TV Ads "success stories" Google provides are from little-known companies FrangranceNet.com and BR-111, and David Rodnitzky observed, "I see nothing in Google’s TV Ad launch that leads me to suggest that this product is going to be any different than Audio or Print Ads."

He later continued, "Insofar as this is a fragmented remnant space, I suppose Google may have an opportunity to bring efficiency and thus value to the market.  But this was the same theory that was suppose to usher in the Google era for radio, and that hasn’t happened."

It is interesting, at least, to see Google charge into another area.  Feel free to speak up if you plan to launch a television campaign.