Dive Brief:
- Interpublic’s Media Lab and Magna units conducted research on pre-roll video ads for the “Ads You Can Feel: The New Mobile Experience” report on haptic ads, according to MediaPost. Haptic ads are tactile, giving users holding a smartphone with vibration turned on an experience that includes an entirely new sense.
- The results from the research found that haptic ads for brands BMW, Royal Caribbean, Arby’s and Truvia improved results with a 50% lift for the brand with consumers as well as notable increases in “happiness” and “excitement.” Standard versions of the ads reached a 37% level of happiness and 30% for excitement while the haptic version of the video ads produced levels of 44% and 38%, respectively.
- A final result according to Interpublic was a “halo effect," with a 6% increase in the perception that the brand itself was more exciting.
Dive Insight:
The results from this research show that the more rich and immersive the media delivering the ad, the higher the level of engagement. This suggests mobile could be a particularly powerful way to deliver video ads as haptic technology is typically built into smartphones, meaning a phone can vibrate at the appropriate moment during the viewing of an ad.
The MediaPost article points to an Arby's ad as an example of how haptic technology works. For users holding a haptic-enabled phone, it vibrates when the voice-over comes on or when a golf ball lands in a cup.
As video advertising continues to grow, the challenge for marketers will be using this new tactic judiciously — too much and it could become overbearing, intrusive or annoying causing users to disable vibration on their phones. But applied sparingly in appropriate spots, haptic feedback could become another differentiator for mobile video advertising.
