Finecast’s research demonstrates the power of relevance for Ebay

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The world's leading auction site
Finecast's Thinking Inside the Box: Measuring the Success of Addressable TV research aimed to discover the clear line between hyper-targeted ads, often viewed as intrusive and therefore unacceptable, and ‘relevant’ ads which, conversely, are seen as more acceptable and even desirable is critical for today’s savvy marketer.
What exactly does ‘relevance’ mean when it comes to advertising and which creative elements make an ad relevant to viewers?
Finecast worked with eBay, a long time TV advertiser, to understand what speaks most powerfully to customers and potential customers, and to test and learn how relevance impacts the audience’s perception or likelihood to convert or take an action.
Using a creative diagnostic approach, we tested two different eBay ads (‘Black Friday’ and ’94 seconds’)
The first ad ‘Black Friday’ was aimed at short-term activation in relation to Black Friday sales and was focused on reaching a value-seeking audience. The second ad ’94 seconds’ was aimed at brand building and focused on telling a story about a couple and their journey through life. In addition to typical campaign diagnostics of each ad, statistical techniques were used to understand the range of creative features driving the perception that the ads were relevant, which features were most important in making a TV creative feel relevant to a viewer and the relationship that a relevant creative had with other key brand metrics and call to action.
The picture this builds for advertisers is quite exciting – the possibilities for exploration into audiences and the content they are served is limited only by imagination (and budgets!) and it’s when audience targeting and creative content work hand in hand that advertisers can see the maximum benefits of addressable TV.

The findings indicate the need for ad creatives to work at the most fundamental level by communicating relevant - i.e. useful, helpful or valuable and timely - information.
4 in 10 felt the ‘Black Friday’ ad was relevant to them compared with a smaller 3 in 10 for the ‘94 Seconds’ ad. Analysis indicated that the utility of the ad was the top factor driving the feeling of relevance in both instances, despite differences in the purpose and execution of each ad.
Download the success story
