As the TV advertising landscape continues to transform, publishers are left to find ways to maintain relevance and unlock new revenue streams. Moving beyond conventional key performance indicators (KPIs) like delivery, and preparing for the deprecation of the cookie, we are entering an era where advertisers expect precision and efficiency from all media investments. In this blog post, we explore the latest measurement capabilities, the impact of the cookie’s demise, and how Cadent Aperture Viewer Graph is helping publishers navigate this dynamic advertising environment.  

The Paradigm Shift in OTT and CTV Advertising 

OTT, CTV, and FAST publishers are no longer just competing on contextual relevance or programming schedules. To remain competitive, they must embrace targeting and measurement solutions that provide advertisers with what they need to thrive in today’s marketplace.  

According to a forecast by eMarketer, CTV ad spending will grow over 20% to reach $30B in 2024. The linear TV industry is no longer a growth industry. This shift is driven by the incorporation of advanced TV data sets, new measurement practices, and an influx of biddable TV ad supply. Publishers will need to future-proof their inventory to support an increasing number of ads on OTT/CTV. This will require you to have the ability to transition from direct IO to programmatic guaranteed (PG) and private marketplace deals (PMP), and from GRPs to real business outcomes like web visits and sales lift.  

The Case for Outcome-Based Measurement 

The call for outcome-based measurement is loud and clear. As advertisers seek more than just delivery and reach metrics for their TV campaigns, publishers must adapt to their customers’ needs. Being proactive, rather than reactive, is crucial to staying ahead. Notably, independent and smaller publishers tend to lack solutions to measure outcomes for third-party demand. The integration of audience data and measurement into your inventory provides a seamless solution for customers who are increasingly demanding a deeper understanding of campaign impact beyond impressions and awareness. 

The complexity of TV measurement requires a shift towards normalizing data across omnichannel campaigns. An identity graph becomes essential in achieving this normalization. Cadent Aperture Platform and its underpinning Viewer Graph technology emerge as a key player, helping publishers and advertisers target audiences seamlessly across the fragmented TV ecosystem. 

Aperture Viewer Graph: A Game-Changing Solution 

Driven by AI, Aperture Viewer Graph achieves outstanding match rates across diverse identifiers such as home addresses, emails, and IP addresses. With over 125M households reached, it connects TV ad exposure on any device to the household, eliminating waste and enabling closed-loop measurement. 

Upload first-party data in minutes, match it with Aperture Viewer Graph, and precisely target high-value audiences in a privacy-safe manner – all without relying on cookies. The always-on, always-learning proprietary model ensures devices are correctly mapped, providing a reliable foundation for data-driven activation. 

With Viewer Graph, you can fully connect with the right audiences, turning data-driven strategy into data-driven activation. As a publisher, Viewer Graph allows you to better support your advertiser customers by optimizing ad campaigns and increasing your monetization potential.   

Next Steps  

As the TV advertising landscape continues to transform, the move towards outcome-based solutions is not just a trend – it’s a necessity. Aperture Viewer Graph stands at the forefront, offering a revolutionary approach to TV measurement. Get in touch to learn more about how Aperture can help you embrace the future of TV advertising with confidence. 

‘Tis the season to be festive and what better than a cocktail to get in the holiday spirit? The alcoholic beverage market is a competitive space, demanding that brands implement a precise media strategy to reach their target audience. According to eMarketer, alcohol retail sales will reach $178.2B with growth driven by an increase in e-commerce sales, and customers willing to splurge on premium beverages to capitalize on at-home consumption, over restaurants and bars. 

To stay top of mind with shoppers, alcoholic beverage brands must leverage media solutions that engage audiences on the path to purchase and at the point of purchase. In recent years, Connected TV (CTV) has emerged as an innovative solution for reaching potential customers across a wide range of demographics and behavioral attributes. Yet many advertisers struggle to make the most of this complex channel. Fortunately, Cadent and Catalina have developed a solution for marketers in the food and beverage category.  

Jägermeister’s Challenge 

As a nearly century-old brand, Jägermeister has found ways to constantly reinvent itself. In the lead up to the gift-giving holiday season, the brand wanted to drive volume and trial among new 21-year-olds. Jägermeister wanted to test the impact of combining CTV with in-store promotions. Ads focused specifically on their 750 ml bottles.  

Goals
• Lift sales
• Increase customer acquisition
• Improve campaign efficiency

The Solution 

Partnering with Cadent and Catalina, Jägermeister was able to strategically target the audiences that were most likely to try their product.

The Plan 

Leveraging Catalina’s real-time purchase insights and behavioral shopping data, the campaign identified current and lapsed buyers of the brand’s 750 ml bottles. The custom-built audience was targeted via addressable CTV through Cadent Aperture Platform, using Jägermeister’s equity ad campaign, Meister the Moment. Audiences were then followed up by being served with an in-store trial offer, in compliance with applicable laws and regulations.

The Results 

Through CTV ad impressions, the multi-channel campaign was able to engage audiences from awareness to trial.  

By The Numbers 
• 4M Impressions
• 53% Overall Sales Lift  
• 59% CTV Sales Lift 
• $2.34 Blended ROAS  

This strategic activation drove a $2.34 blended ROAS, an impressive 53% lift in overall sales and 59% sales lift attributed to CTV impressions.

Next Steps 

Want to learn more about how Cadent and Catalina partnered for Jägermeister’s data-driven CTV advertising campaign?

As we approach Halloween, store shelves are being wiped clean of seasonal décor, costumes, candy, and snacks. CPG brands, to keep up with demand, must find new and innovative ways to lean into autumn with festive treats in flavors like pumpkin spice, apple cider, and toasted marshmallow. In fact, the latest research from the National Retail Federation found: 

• Halloween spending in 2023 is expected to reach a record $12.2 billion, exceeding last year’s record of $10.6 billion  
• Consumers anticipate spending $108.24 per person 
• 73% of consumers plan to celebrate Halloween this year, up from 69% last year and 68% in 2019 

So, to stand out from the crowd, CPG brands are not only developing new products but also reconsidering their media mix to reach shoppers – across screens and devices – throughout the customer journey.  

Connected TV (CTV), as one of the fastest-growing channels, has emerged as an innovative way to engage consumers. However, many advertisers have struggled to make the most of this impactful marketing tool. Enter Cadent and Catalina.  

Stuffed Puffs’ Challenge 

Launched in 2012, Stuffed Puffs are the invention of founder Michael Tierney in response to the difficulty of melting chocolate to create the perfect s’more. Since then, the brand has gone on to develop a variety of flavors beyond the classic milk chocolate-filled marshmallow, including Monster Marsh, which features green marshmallows filled with chocolate and covered in sprinkles. For this campaign, Stuffed Puffs and their media agency Junction 37 wanted to get the word out about its product to drive trial and keep their brand top of mind. 

Goals
• Increase customer acquisition
• Lift brand awareness and sales
• Improve campaign efficiency

The Solution 

Partnering with Cadent and Catalina, Stuffed Puffs was able to use CTV for lower-funnel activities like driving trial generation and repeat purchases. 

The Plan 

Together, Cadent and Catalina implemented a CTV campaign using Catalina’s Purchase-Based targeting through Cadent Aperture Platform to pinpoint Marshmallow & Smores Buyers who had never purchased the brand before, as well as their current competitive and lapsed buyers. CTV ads were then targeted to this unique audience by mapping this audience to CTV households with Aperture Viewer Graph. Catalina’s Multi-Touch Attribution measurement was used throughout the campaign to make in-flight tweaks to optimize at the audience level.  

The Results 

Through CTV ad impressions, the campaign was able to deliver results higher than benchmarked expectations – due in large part to purchase-based targeting at the household level and the ability to optimize in-flight.  

By The Numbers 
• $0.66 Incremental ROAS  
• 58% Sales Lift 
• 75% Buyers New to Brand  

This strategic activation drove a $0.66 incremental ROAS and an impressive 58% lift in sales. Additionally, 75% of buyers were new to the brand.  

Next Steps 

Want to learn more about how Cadent and Catalina partnered for Stuffed Puffs’ data-driven CTV advertising campaign?  

When a CMO sits down with their C-suite colleagues at the end of each month, the first question isn’t, “On what currency did we transact our media against?” The CEOs and CFOs of brands are looking to understand how their marketing investment drove sales – the details surrounding currency methodology are secondary. 

On a recent panel of the Joint Industry Committee, a comment was made that right now, 90% of effort and ad spend is focused on currency and counting, with only 10% going to outcomes and sales lift. While the innovation in the currency space is significant, smart buyers and sellers are simultaneously building pipes, people, and processes around another key development in TV – the ability to track more precise outcome-based measurement. As the tactics and methods from digital are bleeding into TV, so are the precise targeting and measurement solutions. 

Advertisers now can understand both household reach and frequency, as well as how their TV dollars are driving incremental foot traffic, automotive sales, and in-store sales lift, among other KPIs. Brand marketers can precisely understand what TV spend is driving cash register sales, and how to best optimize and improve efficiencies against the outcomes that are most important to their business.  

Key Terminology 

Before we go too far down one path, we feel it’s important to clarify the differences between measurement currency and business outcome-based measurement.  

• Measurement Currency: Currency is the financial unit of value for buying and selling TV ads based on measurement data. (AdExchanger) 
   
• Business Outcome-Based Measurement: Outcome-driven metrics are measures of operational and business outcomes that provide a direct line of sight back to the outcomes on which they depend, and with outcomes that are dependent on them. (Gartner) 

Measure Campaign Performance Against KPIs 

Cadent unveiled measurement marketplace, a feature of Aperture Audience Studio, earlier this year to power outcome-based measurement solutions and support better currency performance.  The solution was designed in direct response to industry feedback that measurement has become too complex – – causing operational burdens and leading to choice paralysis. With more data than ever and various options for systems and partners, the TV measurement landscape is challenging to navigate. It adds complexity to proof of performance, optimization, and cross-screen measurement processes.  

“CTV measurement has come a long way in just a few short years. We, along with partners like Cadent, are investing in advanced measurement capabilities to enable advertisers to delve deeply into measuring outcomes. From tracking website visits to connecting CTV viewership with sales with our Sales Conversion Attribution solution, we’re helping advertisers to truly understand the ROI of each impression in their campaign,” said Dave Marquard, Head of Product at Premion. 

Since launching measurement marketplace, there have been a few critical learnings for marketers:  

• Determine if outcome-based measurement will be used – well before the campaign starts 
• Align the audience targeting strategy with measurement goals 
• Use the same graph solution for both targeting and measurement to increase data fidelity 
• Create test and control groups pre-campaign 
• Engage with the measurement providers early and often about feasibility and deliverables  

TV marketers are improving their ability to understand and optimize against key business outcomes, leaving behind competitors who aren’t innovating. Smart TV networks, distributions, broadcasters, and OTT publishers, are doing the same, offering up smarter TV solutions and winning more marketing dollars from competitors with precise measurement solutions.   

“Affinity is seeing more advertisers shift to outcome-based measurement in Advanced TV, making their TV dollars more efficient, and accountable said Ken Barbieri, SVP, Business Development. “We expect that growth to continue, as smarter marketers realize the potential”.   

Currency and outcomes-based measurement go hand in hand, and the winners in the market will be savvy buyers and sellers who are building up tech stacks around both now.   

Learn more about the measurement partners available through Aperture Platform.

In a recent interview between Lindsay Teague, SVP of Advanced TV Solutions & Sales at Cadent, and Devon T. Smith, Studio 30 Contributing Editor at Ad Age, they explore how marketers can make holistic TV ad planning, buying, and measurement easier, smarter, and more efficient – and prove their ROI. Lindsay offers her perspective on the challenges brands experience when executing cross-screen TV campaigns. Their discussion touches on the disruption taking place across the advertising landscape and what marketers must do to make the most of their media investment.

To learn more about how marketers can improve the results of their linear and CTV advertising campaigns in our converging TV ecosystem, watch Lindsay and Devon’s full conversation below.

Original Broadcast

As retailers prepared for the 2022 holiday season, it was imperative to find ways to bring shoppers into stores. Consumers continued to feel the pinch of inflation; lingering supply chain issues slowed the speed of inventory hitting the shelves for some while others struggled with inventory pile-ups. So, how could retailers tackle these challenges and drive revenue during this critical shopping period? Cross-screen TV presented the opportunity to reach a broad audience through broadcast and cable while targeting highly specific consumers through CTV. Learn how this craft and home décor store took its holiday campaign from a gloomy Grinch to a sensational snowman with Cadent’s TV advertising solutions.   

Retailer’s Challenge 

A big box retailer best known for selling home décor and craft supplies wanted to drive awareness around their holiday promotions and sales of their seasonal products. Their challenge was to continue to acquire new and competitive shoppers while defending loyal customers. 

Goals  
• Increase customer acquisition  
• Boost customer loyalty  
• Lift sales
• Improve campaign efficiency

The Solution 

Cadent partnered with the retailer’s agency to develop a strategic, cross-screen campaign to engage a custom-curated audience of women who were in-market shoppers, Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers, last-minute holiday shoppers, as well as loyal and competitive customers.  

The Results 

The data-driven campaign ultimately reached 45 million households. Through this cross-platform execution that included cable, broadcast, and CTV media, the campaign was successful in driving an increase in visits, more unique household visits, and more frequent store visits.  

Working with 605, which utilizes a custom weighting methodology designed to account for multiple platform biases, enabled us to holistically project and measure national reach across individual and overlapping platforms. 

Notably, including CTV in the campaign’s media mix expanded the reach of “Medium” and “Light” linear viewers, who may only be reachable by alternative inventory, demonstrating that CTV is a critical component for delivering a complete TV audience. 

By the numbers  
•  $5 ROAS
•  37% lift in visit rate
•  18% lift in unique visit rate
•  17% lift in average visit frequence

Of the households reached, the campaign observed over 360,000 incremental unique visitors to visit with a cost per visit of $12.85. The campaign can also be credited with driving approximately 1.1 million visits with a cost per visit of $4.17, and the 1.1 million incremental visits combined with the client average basket value of around $25, means that for every $1 spent, the client yielded an average of $5 in return on ad spend (ROAS).  

Additionally, the inclusion of all media tactics (broadcast, cable, and CTV) allowed for additional unique audiences to be exposed to the campaign and demonstrated that without broadcast and CTV platform executions, the campaign would not have been able to reach 56% of strategic audience households. 

Next Steps 

Want to learn more about how Cadent activated this impactful cross-screen TV campaign?  

Welcome to The Addressable TV Guide! This is part 5 where we take a closer look at a real-life example of an Addressable TV campaign.  

To catch up on the previous posts in this series, visit our Addressable TV hub. 

Addressable TV has the power to make a major impact. As we explored in other posts in The Addressable TV Guide series, it offers the reach of linear with the precision of data-driven targeting, the ability to leverage both first-party customer data and third-party audience segments, and unparalleled measurement solutions to determine the return on ad spend (ROAS) of your campaigns.  

So, with all these reasons to try Addressable TV, what more could you need? Well, real-life examples speak for themselves. Addressable TV can help drive business outcomes for many verticals, from auto to QSR. However, it’s worth mentioning that 2022 is expected to be the year of going big with vacations, with more than two-thirds of Americans – a whopping 68% – planning to splurge on travel and seek out international destinations.  

With that in mind, let’s explore what makes Addressable TV an essential advertising channel for your upcoming travel and tourism campaigns. 

Why Hospitality and Addressable TV are the Perfect Pair 

A major hotel brand chose to use Aperture for a recent Addressable TV advertising campaign. The brand’s primary KPI was to increase bookings among rewards members. Their agency of record developed a campaign for Addressable Linear STB on Aperture, leveraging the brand’s first-party data on existing rewards members and other guests who stayed in their locations in the past year.  

After the campaign ended, sales impact was measured within the 30-day post-campaign attribution window through Aperture platform’s third-party measurement partner, Experian.  

The Proof is in the Pudding 

Results of the hotel brand’s Addressable TV advertising campaign demonstrated:  

• 10% lift in overall booking confirmations 
• 14% lift in hotel website visitation  
• 13% lift in rewards page visitation  
• 82% of confirmation page conversations from unique households 

Now that you have a greater understanding of Addressable TV, it’s time to put your knowledge to the test. And the best way to know the true worth of something is to use it yourself.  

If you’re ready to get started with your next Addressable TV campaign, get in touch with our sales team today. 

To read another Aperture success story and learn more about Addressable TV, download our new guide. 

Welcome to The Addressable TV Guide! This is part 4 where we explore the comprehensive measurement solutions now available for Addressable TV campaigns. Come back next week for part 5 when we will share customer success stories.  

To catch up on other posts in this series, visit our Addressable TV hub. 

With the ubiquity of digital advertising, brands have come to expect that their campaigns will clearly demonstrate return on ad spend (ROAS). A simple formula of revenue attributable to ads divided by the cost of ads can show whether a digital campaign was successful; however, TV advertising long suffered from existing within a “black box,” operating with little visibility into direct results achieved. Today’s data-driven advertising flipped this TV ROAS paradigm on its head.  

As we discussed earlier in the series, Addressable TV enables advertisers to measure a variety of business outcomes including sales lift, web traffic, foot traffic, and brand health. Advertisers can now determine the effectiveness of their TV campaigns, drawing a line between the TV ad to customer preferences and behaviors from top-of-the-funnel metrics, like brand awareness, to bottom-of-the-funnel metrics, like in-store purchases.  

Before you launch an Addressable TV campaign, find out what you need to know to set campaign objectives and how to measure your results.  

Setting Your Campaign Objective 

When building your Addressable TV campaign, audience-based targeting solutions allow you to leverage behavioral, purchase, intent, and other data sources. As a result, Addressable TV offers the best of both worlds – the reach of linear with the ability to measure success in terms of business outcomes, such as conversion, acquisition, and revenue. So, how do you select your campaign objective? Here are 5 questions you should consider:  

• Is your goal to boost awareness of an already well-known brand?  
• Are you launching a new product where success is measured by units sold?  
• Does your product or service illicit a direct response – e.g., call this number or visit this website? 
• Does your brand fall within a highly competitive or saturated marketplace?  
• Is your ad part of a brand refresh or complete rebranding?  

Closed-Loop Measurement Solutions  

As you implement a measurement solution for Addressable TV, it is important to understand the differences between types of measurement studies. Closed-loop measurement methodologies are used to determine the lift in the desired action by the exposed group (consumers who were shown the ad) versus the control group (consumers who did not see the ad).  

Through Aperture Dashboard, users gain access to deterministic attribution reporting for KPIs including sales lift, brand health, web traffic, and foot traffic metrics. With more robust reporting, agencies can easily demonstrate accountability to brand clients while providing valuable insights for future campaigns.   

To learn more about measurement solutions for Addressable TV, download our new guide.  

Every studio head and film marketer wishes they had a crystal ball. Without one, who can predict why a low-budget action-adventure with a little-known cast performs like a blockbuster on VOD or how a star-studded rom-com that blew away the box-office competition on its opening weekend disappears with as little trace as a small bag of concession-stand popcorn.

While no one can rely on crystal balls (except maybe in the movies), there is a data-driven way to make informed decisions about an on-demand campaign: box office delta.

Simply put, box office delta is the difference, expressed as a percentage, between a film’s opening box office take versus its total box office. And no matter what the genre—costume drama, comedy, horror, or science fiction—having that figure can be revelatory. Films with higher box office deltas tend to exceed their video on demand (VOD) rental revenue goals, and the reverse is true as well: a lower box office delta often means a missed video on demand rental revenue goal that will need to be adjusted.

We analyzed more than 50 VOD rental campaigns from 2018 and found that the average box office delta was 363% (the result of an average domestic opening weekend being slightly over $19 million, while average domestic total box office worked out to slightly under $70 million).

There are, of course, outliers, and those prove especially instructive for Cadent’s purposes. For example, a dark superhero flick pulls in more than $80 million in its opening weekend and more than $200 million in its box office total, by no means a failure for a theatrical performance, but there’s a compelling story there for its VOD performance. The delta for this particular film was less than half the average, telling us that it might be lacking momentum entering the VOD landscape. Whereas an action-adventure remake with an opening weekend gross of a respectable $36.2 million racked up a jaw-dropping total box office of $404.5 million, meaning its box office delta was more than three times the average. It’s reasonable to conclude that there’s significant organic interest in the film as it leaves its theatrical run and enters into the VOD landscape.

Box office hits or failures don’t necessarily make hits or failures in the VOD space; what’s important is whether the title has audience interest and whether that interest is building as the film enters the VOD rental window.

Campaigns with high box office deltas exceeded their revenue goal by an average of 18%, while those with lower deltas missed their goals by an average of 11%. Of the 43 campaigns with under-average delta, almost half missed their revenue goal, while of the nine with over-average delta just a single film missed its goal.  With box office delta as a planning variable, this could be anticipated and planned for.

Box office delta can be an enormous help in setting realistic VOD revenue goals during the planning stages by serving as a benchmark. In other words, by adjusting opening box office numbers based on box office delta early on, we can much more accurately foresee VOD revenue.

Let’s take the example “Shape of Water.” It opened up with $3 million (and the chosen comparisons average just slightly over that). Later, however, thanks in large part to positive press and a good showing during awards season, the movie caught some buzz, and its box office delta ended up at 2028%. The takeaway is that the movie still had an active audience despite it no longer being in theaters, Potentially, it could punch above its weight because of overwhelming interest it had coming into the rental window.

Basing a campaign on that modest opening weekend would represent a missed opportunity. Mathematically, the huge box office delta suggests that the film has performed more like one with a $13 million opening (versus the $3 million it had), and that’s the figure that should be considered when setting VOD goals.

In an opposite scenario, a movie with a lot of advance buzz might have an epic opening weekend as fans flock to be in the vanguard; box office delta could then end up being low, because everyone who wanted to see it did so right at the start and the film didn’t build lifetime momentum. Thus, a low box office delta. That state of affairs will naturally affect the VOD outcome, and a marketer who has taken box office delta into consideration might just have averted an expensive debacle.

No two movies are exactly alike, and, admittedly, no one campaign strategy is going to fit every film, but box office delta provides a powerful tool that allows marketers to consider both short-term performance and the long tail while planning for on-demand.  When combined with 20+ other variables, we have a pretty solid expectation for how a film will perform in the VOD rental window.  It’s not quite a crystal ball, but almost.

Get in touch with us for more information.

When you watch Apple’s new ad “Bounce,” what do you see? Hear? Feel? Smell? Will that ad continue to pop back in your mind later in the day? Was it the music? Colors? Tone? Voice? All of these elements are the basis for developing, designing and producing powerful, innovative creative. 

Bulova Watches aired the first TV commercial on July 1, 1941, which cost $9 and featured a watch floating on the screen for 10 seconds. TV soon became the dominant advertising platform. Now, conversations marketers have with their consumers are much more than a 15 or 30-second promotion of a product or company; they span digital and analog channels. They’re web banners, emails, out-of-home ads and so much more. Marketers have always had to carefully consider how they invest to build their brands, but today, in an increasingly complex and fragmented media environment, that responsibility has expanded. Data drives many brand-building decisions today, and more than ever, proficiency in analytics and measuring the success of creative is just as important as creativity itself. 

It follows that conversations in the industry around creativity focus on tangible results, data-driven messages and relevance. But we can’t forget about the power of a truly innovative creative.

In today’s attention economy, impactful creative still wins the day. And TV is a critical component of the brand-consumer relationship. As Cadent CEO Nick Troiano said, as brand advertising shifts to modern, data-driven techniques, “advertisers continue to rely on television as the most powerful vehicle for emotionally resonant storytelling.” From color to text to sound to movement, each part creates a unique message for the brand, influences the viewer’s opinions of the product and evokes emotion. 

Marketers drive business through creativity

Ads that attain iconic status have a few things in common: strong, consistent brand images and clearly communicated core values. Consumers can simply look at the logo and identify the brand. Creativity weaved into the ad differentiates the company – that’s the art aspect of advertising.

When a campaign is developed, the creative director must not only think about the product they are trying to sell, but the elements: will the beauty, the poetic, the humor, the heroism, the interesting, the bizarre, catch the viewers attention so they don’t click the fast forward or ‘skip ad’ button? Overall, campaigns that rely on creativity are considerably more effective, according to the Harvard Business Review. What makes a successful creative campaign effective? It all comes back to having a purpose – to connect to the viewer through aesthetic communication. 

As Creative Director Chuck McBride said, it’s not “very safe for people in advertising to think of their work as art, because it loses its purpose. We’re here to help business grow.”  

Iasmina Petrovici concludes in her “Role of Aesthetic Communication in Advertising” that “in order to be both expressive and successful, the advertisement imagery must not only convey information, but define an aesthetic function, and determine a positive reaction on the audience.” There is a fine line between art and advertising in many cases. In order to resonate with an audience, marketers must push the limits of creativity.  

According to Nielsen research, creative quality is still is the most important factor for driving sales.

The art and science behind marketing

Burger King CMO Fernando Machado’s approach to brand building is often celebrated, especially in the age of granular targeting and data-informed creative: “Machado remains a champion of creativity. He believes creative marketing truly drives business,” Digiday reports. One example of this is 66 Scenes of America, an ad that used footage of Andy Warhol eating a Whopper for 45 seconds. Millions of viewers during the Super Bowl buzzed about the ad, and searches for Andy Warhol spiked beyond any other search during the Super Bowl. In a survey of 1,200 people, there was a 49% lift in individuals talking about the ad two weeks following the Super Bowl. 

Andy Warhol, a renowned pop culture artist who liked to engage with the lines between art and advertising, was an intentional choice. Machado was quoted as saying that “it’s kind of cool that [Warhol] did a lot of art that looked like advertising and that we are using his art to advertise. It’s like a silent assassin in the clutter of the Super Bowl.” Similar to “Bounce,” this is an illustration of  the “artful business” that marketing is. The measures of success will follow, if powerful creative is implemented. 

Creating artful ads starts with the goal of championing creativity, investing in it, and empowering marketers to be creative and take advantage of aesthetic communication to uplevel their work.