The Unruly Blog

11 Unruly experts share their big predictions for the advertising industry in 2020 1 – Advertisers Will Realise The Importance Of Getting Creative Right Norm Johnston, CEO Over the past year the abandonment of the cookie, the shift away from traditional KPIs like viewability, and the realisation that formats should complement each other rather than compete all indicate we’re focusing on the wrong parts of the advertising process. When talking to global advertisers, the one thing they complain about time and time again is the lack of creativity in important areas like programmatic. Martin Sorrell knows this and it’s why over the past year he’s bought companies like Media Monks and Mighty Hive that assist clients with this particular need. A study from Nielsen recently looked into the

Study also finds under 35s are 42% more likely to leave gift buying until last minute For a lot of people, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. But all that drinking, eating, partying, gift-giving and travelling comes at a cost — and we’re not just talking about our waistlines. The festive period is also a time when we think more with our hearts than our wallets, which can be hard on our bank balances. According to stats from The Bank of England, the average U.K. household spends 33% more per month in the run-up to Christmas. But how do people decide what to spend their hard-earned cash on and where? And what influence does the annual Christmas ad blitz have on where consumers decide to

AOP Crunch 2.6 — the Association of Publishers’ final Crunch event of the year — took place at Prince Philip House in London last week  Although organised by a publisher-focused association, the main focus of the AOP Crunch is about bringing both the buy and sell sides of the programmatic industry together.  The hope is that by working together they will be able to solve some of the biggest issues facing the industry, such as better data implementation and measurement of the true impact media buying has on the consumer funnel.  But don’t worry if you couldn’t make it to the event. Calvin Field, Unruly’s Senior Manager of Platform Growth, Europe, was there in London on the 21st of November. Here are some of his key findings:  A

As Americans gear up to gobble down turkey en masse in the name of Thanksgiving, advertisers in the U.S know that as soon as the last apple pie is put down, the biggest shopping season of the year kicks off. As retailers brace themselves for stampedes of shoppers, we’ve rounded up a list of trends and insights to help prepare you for this holiday season.   This year there’s less time to shop! Black Friday may attract a lot of headlines. But when it comes to shopping online, Cyber Monday is more prominent. Over the past 5 years, Cyber Monday has brought in the majority of the digital commerce sales in the U.S over the Thanksgiving and Black Friday shopping season. Every year since 2014, spending has grown,

Apple has unveiled its new Holiday ad just ahead of Thanksgiving. But be warned: you will need some tissues! The tech giant’s festive offering has become one of the most highly-anticipated releases of the Yuletide period. And this year’s campaign — named “The Surprise” — is certainly worth the wait. The last time I got this emotional about a piece of tech was when my parents bought me a Commodore 64 for Xmas (yes, I am that old). The ad features a couple and their two young girls travelling to their grandfather’s home for the holidays. As kids do, they fight and complain all the way there and are only calmed by the family iPad. There’s no let-up when they get to their grandad, who is sad after

The very best of Western Australia’s creative industry was out in force at the awards ceremony for its 29th year, held in Kings Park, Perth on Friday 8th November 2019     Earlier this month we sponsored The Skulls (Australia’s answer to Cannes Lions) alongside our cousins over at News Corp. Comedian and TV personality Claire Hooper presented just shy of 100 awards across categories, including film and television advertising, digital design and creativity for good.  For the first time ever, there were also Student Skulls awards handed out for design, advertising, student photography and film briefs.   This year’s jury was led by Head of Skulls (official title!) Tom Richards, CCO at Havas Lynx in the UK, demonstrating the true international focus of the awards. Some incredible campaigns

2019 joint campaign with Waitrose finishes just ahead of 2017 and 2018 campaigns, but signs are John Lewis formula is losing its festive sparkle “Excitable Edgar” is the third least effective John Lewis Christmas ad of all time, according to our new research. Released last week, the UK retailer’s first-ever joint festive ad with Waitrose tells the story of a little girl and her friendship with an excitable young dragon. With a catchy song and cute protagonist, “Excitable Edgar” seemed like a return to the tried-and-trusted John Lewis festive formula. But after ranking all of the John Lewis Christmas ads from the last nine years using our proprietary metric EQ Score — a composite score based on the intensity of emotions viewers felt while watching, plus a campaign’s

Female consumers also had a more negative view of the brand and were less likely to buy the product after watching Philadelphia’s “New Dads” campaign, according to our new research. To mark international men’s day we’ve used our emotional targeting and testing tool, UnrulyEQ, to analyse the emotions from two ads that were banned earlier this year under the Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) new gender stereotyping rules. Philadelphia’s “New Dads” – banned by the ad watchdog for featuring negative gender stereotypes – performed poorly with both men and women, but the reaction among women was particularly bad. Female viewers were not only 37% more likely to find the commercial sexist than men, they also had a more negative view of the brand after watching. Women were also less