We are thrilled to share with you one of the most exciting studies we have worked on to date. It is a first-of-its-kind user study, in collaboration with the Brand Safety Institute and Nielsen Innovate.
Propelled by the rising awareness of socially-responsible advertising and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance), we have set out to explore the impact of advertising next to ESG-Positive content on brand perception.
“New Study Confirms Doing Good is Good for Business” – Brand Safety Institute.
While brand safety tools allow advertisers to avoid harmful content, essentially creating a bare minimum floor for content they agree to advertise on, in this study we aim to go one step further. We study the impact of blocking harmful content, but also empowering advertisers to identify high quality and contextually-relevant content, that resonates with brand values and resonates with the values of their audiences.
The study covers:
1. What are ESG-positive and ESG-negative content?
2. How do Millennials perceive brands that support sustainable content?
3. Can advertising on ESG-Positive content increase buying intent for brands?
ESG-Scoring was calculated using AdVerif.AI technology based on semantic natural language processing to identify articles’ topicality and intent:
Positive – content related to sustainability, recycling, nature preservation and clean environment.
Neutral – general news and blogs content.
Negative – content related to climate change denial and global warming misinformation.
During the study, respondents were presented with questions regarding their perception of brands in the context of articles’ content. For each question, respondents were randomly presented with ads appearing next to a positive, neutral or negative article, sampled at random.
What did we find?
The study finds that Socially-Responsible Advertising drives better brand perception and ROI. Specifically, ads placed next to pro-sustainability content:
Led to 17 percent more consumers having a positive perception of the brand when compared to neutral content and 36 percent more consumers having a positive perception when compared to negative content (e.g., climate change denial).
Drove consumer perception as the brand being pro-sustainability at higher levels than neutral content (+35 percent) and negative content (+97 percent).
More than doubled the percentage of consumers reporting a high willingness to buy from that brand when compared with content containing negative sustainability sentiments like climate change denial.
What is the ESG score of your advertising campaigns?
Following these inspiring results, we are rolling out a new capability to target pro-sustainability content for advertising campaigns across all major DSPs.
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