Where’s the guarantee in advertising?

Start watching the adverts on telly and you know you’re in trouble.

TV advertising is held up to be the pinnacle of advertising pedestals – which is why it’s so expensive. But when was the last time you bought something that you saw advertised on TV? I play this game with my telly-and-sofa-partner and the answer for us is: we never have! Why is that? Maybe they’re advertising the wrong stuff or maybe we’re the wrong audience for whatever’s being advertised. Or maybe it’s the wrong way of reaching us. And most of the time we record what we watch and fast-forward the adverts. Ooh, lots of moving parts…

There’s one thing you do know about advertising. None of the owners of the advertising platforms guarantee that people will see your advertising. The best they can manage is that the potential audience has an OTS: an “Opportunity To See” your advertising. Which means, they are expected to have a chance to see your advertisement – and that’s ok. It’s about as close as you can get to a guarantee in advertising anyway, right?

Let’s test that: these days, digital advertising is seen as being a great way of reaching the people you want of customers. In the digital world, they measure impressions – which usually describes how often content appears on a user’s screen or feed. Impressions aren’t the same as engagement. Impressions indicate the possibility of users viewing an advert. No guarantees.

In outdoor advertising, as we just mentioned, your potential audience are expected to have a chance to see your advert. And that’s the same for nearly all outdoor advertising platforms.  All except one. They offer something called a GVC: a Guaranteed Visual Connection. Sounds controversial: all the others only offer an opportunity but this mob offer a guarantee. How come?

It’s simple really. Everybody else in Outdoor has a media that you walk past or drive past. This can be at some distance or by virtue of transport, at some speed. Others have their format in the same space in which you might be sitting or standing, but it can be anywhere in the space and these days, if you’re human, you’re often looking at your phone, not the wallpaper.

In this case, the contentious guarantee is offered on something you hold in your hand. You hold it for 2-3 minutes, but you start looking at it before you hold it. And while you’re holding it, you will never look at your mobile phone. In fact, research using something called X-Ray Specs (which is glasses fitted with cameras that track your eye-movements) have measured that while holding whatever-it-is, you look at the advertising on-and-off for an average of 52 seconds. Added to this, in the entire time that you are exposed to the advert you are surrounded by a minimum of 15, and a maximum of 49 of the same advert, wherever you turn. And they’re in close proximity. And the activity that you’re involved in is so important that the media owner guarantees that you will look at the advertising a minimum of nine times!

What does that mean for you and your business? What does it mean for your potential customer? Well, it’s guaranteed that they will hold and see your advertising message. They will engage – guaranteed. All you need for them to do now is consider and act and you’re popping the cork on your next customer acquisition! All you’ve got to do is create the message that gets that job done.

So what is it they hold? To put it in context, it’s slightly bigger than a mobile phone screen and you will have seen it while you’re filling up with petrol or diesel, on any petrol filling station that is running a live ad campaign.

This is how the nine Guaranteed Visual Connections work:

Now I grant you that for you to stand any chance of converting a prospect to a customer the message has to be relevant to them, either now or in the future. Your advert also has to play a part in grabbing their attention and interest. A Call-to-Action would help to get them doing something positive in your favour. This is common to all forms of advertising.

The fact that they will see your advertising multiple times a month and the number of people who fill up at a petrol stations every month is measured in the tens of thousands gives you a great insight into how many people will hold your advertising as opposed to those that are expected to have a chance to see it!

Happy advertising!