How The Walt Disney Company Latin America measures engagement

Daniela Novick of The Walt Disney Company Latin America and Felix Oberholzer-Gee of the Harvard Business School demonstrated how television can engage with consumers just as innovatively as digital media at ESOMAR’s LATAM event, earlier this year.

When thinking of media, most attention goes to mobile and online applications. Television screens however, still reach billions of consumers worldwide and will continue to do so. But in order to guarantee its place in the media landscape, TV needs to compete with its digital challengers for crucial ad spend. For this, it’s essential that it changes with the times. TV must show it can capture viewers’ attention with content in a similar fashion as social media. The medium also needs to prove it can help brands reach consumers with the same pinpoint precision as its digital competitors. This is why the research department at The Walt Disney Company Latin America developed an innovative way to measure engagement – in realtime and in people’s homes.

Daniela Novick, Head of Research at The Walt Disney Company Latin America, explains that the television industry has long used two primary dimensions upon which to determine the price of advertisements: show ratings and demographic characteristics.

“While these are necessary conditions for desirable marketing outcomes – brands need to find ways to reach their target audience – the return on investment in television advertisements also depends on the psychological and emotional experience of viewers who observe the commercial messages.” Engagement is not only critical for commercial messages, she adds, but also for regular television programming. “More engaging television shows might find a larger audience and remain popular over longer periods of time. In addition, more engaging content might be attractive for advertisers if engagement with a show changes the audience’s experience of commercials during breaks. Such carryover effects, would have important consequences for the effective placement of advertisements.”

Wristbands

For the research, Daniela Novick worked with Professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee at the Harvard Business School, one of the foremost innovative universities in the world. Novick: “To develop this challenge we knew we needed to partner with one of the best in class universities. We were very pleased to worked with Professor Oberholzer-Gee, his knowledge and expertise was key to develop the full investigation.”

Novick, who is responsible for data science, content impact analysis and subscription and retention models, explains that the first study was a laboratory one. The research team recruited 97 Spanish-speaking participants from the Harvard Decision Science Lab subject pool. Their HRV (heart rate variability) was measured with electrocardiography equipment and also with portable medical wristbands to capture the physiological responses to commercials and shows using both methodologies. “After this study we were able to confirm the portable wristband as a good HRV predictor, and for the first time run a massive study in a real context: people’s homes.”

The team ran three studies across Latin-America. In Mexico City it monitored 800 people for five weeks, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The same was done in Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires, with 440 people in each city. During those field studies they were able to measure psychological engagement with TV content, second by second across four consecutive weeks in people’s homes.

Oberholzer-Gee explains why HRV – the degree to which our hearts speed up or slow down – is an important physical marker of engagement in measuring audience engagement when watching television. “We have known for a long time that heart rate variability is an excellent measure of engagement but we did not have a way to capture it outside the laboratory. Now we can use Fitbit-like devices (activity trackers, wearable technology devices, etc., ed.) that accurately measure HRV and audience engagement. This is different from previous methodologies; in the past, studies of engagement were conducted in the laboratory. By contrast, our participants are at home, watching television in their regular environment.”

Entertain and engage

The ground-breaking research delivered several key results that will impact how the company runs advertising campaigns in the future. Novick lists the main findings:

1. Correlation: “During our laboratory study and field works we found no correlation between engagement and reach or rating. There is a third variable we need to consider when placing commercials: engagement.”

2. Engagement level: “Engagement level changes from one episode to another, depending on the story.”

3. Spill-over: “Engagement has a spill-over from programming to ads. In this case the same spot, simply by a different placement in the programming grid, could bring different results in terms of audience engagement with the message.”

4. Conversion: “Most important for the advertiser: the likelihood of purchase increases as engagement is higher.”

Based on these findings, she says: “The path we plan to follow in the near future is connected to the ability of doing dynamic planning and hypertargeting, based on engagement as another key variable to track. We will also use this approach to do creative testing and ROI modelling.” Measuring real-time engagement can improve the marketing outcome, concludes Oberholzer. “The goal of television is to entertain and engage. This research allows us to produce better shows and more engaging commercials. The latter will not only delight audiences but will also help brands be more memorable.”

To see highlights of the research, please click here.

The ‘TV Real-Time Engagement!’ LATAM 2019 presentation recording is available at ESOMAR Resource Library ANA and can be accessed here.