white paper newsflash: reaching asia’s high income earners...in brand and communications research...

InstituteonAsianConsumerInsight|NanyangBusinessSchool,NanyangTechnologicalUniversity

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Newsflash: reaching asia’s high income earners Sally Wu is a Fellow of the Institute on Asian Consumer Insight and as a Research Director, Business & Audience Insights for BBC Global News, Asia Pacific.

INTRODUCTION

BBC Global News Limited published a comprehensive research study, the first of its kind, examining the usage of mobile devices in news consumption among affluent consumers globally. The results reveal the increasing importance of smartphones and demonstrate the extent to which mobile devices are integrated into the affluents’ personal and business lives, as improved technology enables greater engagement with content. The study also provides clear evidence that affluent consumers are significantly more receptive to mobile advertising than the general population.

BACKGROUND

BBC Global News Ltd is an advertising-funded news organisation that operates in all countries except the UK. It is part of the BBC and shares the same brand values of trust, authority and unbiased high quality news reporting but is a commercial company competing with other international news organisations like CNN, Al Jazeera, and Sky News as well as the online properties of the Financial Times, The Economist and the Wall Street Journal. BBC Global News distributes news via TV (Global News 70 million weekly viewers), BBC.com (58 million monthly unique visitors) and mobile (19 million monthly unique visitors); audiences are increasingly consuming BBC news on mobile rather than desktop, in line with global trends. BBC’s audiences tend to be relatively well-educated, affluent and internationally-minded compared to the average citizen of their country; consequently, advertising on the BBC tends to be a brand sell and for upmarket hotel chains and destinations, banks, luxury goods and corporate campaigns. As Mobile Researcher of the Year,1) Millward Brown is uniquely placed amongst research companies to deploy mobile research methodologies on a global scale, leveraging its expertise in brand and communications research for the world’s leading advertisers.



BUSINESS OBJECTIVE

A major change in our business is the movement of BBC news consumers from desktop to mobile consumption. The latest traffic indicates around half of BBC’s digital users come from mobile devices (not including apps). As a result BBC has invested and started implementing ‘responsive design’ whereby the delivery of content on desktop and mobile is identical and seamless. The issue the advertising industry as a whole faces is the distortion of mobile advertising rate vs. that of desktop ads. This is an industry-wide issue and BBC is keen to take a lead in helping to change advertisers’ general reluctance to embrace mobile brand marketing by demonstrating that branding campaigns work on mobile.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE

Primarily the findings of the project should help the BBC establish a thought leadership position for mobile advertising to upmarket consumers and business decision makers internationally.

It is recognised that advertiser’s client-side and in media agencies understand the mobile habits of the general population (particularly the younger demographics) but not the upmarket consumer and B2B audiences that the BBC caters for. The research aims to help to educate potential advertisers trying to reach these target audiences: providing practical advice to facilitate successful mobile branding advertising campaigns. Key research objectives are:

• Importance and role of mobile in personal and business lives of consumers

• How mobile consumption differs from desktop

• Share of time spent on mobile (and tablet if wireless enabled)

• Degree of acceptance of advertising on apps and mobile websites

• Free to use in return for advertising? What do consumers expect in return for advertising?



METHODOLOGY

Multi-country quantitative survey

The aim of this study is to compare and contrast the top 20% household income earners’ attitudes to mobile marketing with the general population. In total we surveyed 6,000 smartphone owners aged 18+ years via online surveys almost a third of whom also owned a tablet. One thousand samples were obtained from six countries which were selected to represent a global sample. BBC users fell out naturally within the sample. Over one-third of affluents use the BBC mobile news sites or news app at least once a month.

FIGURE1.

Global mobile ad effectiveness database analysis

In order to understand the impact of brand advertising on mobile we propose to analyse the Millward Brown Global Ad Effectiveness database amongst the top 20% of household income earners, and compare results with rest of population including evaluation of any differences by category in advertising response in the mobile environment.

BBC mobile case studies

BBC mobile case studies use real campaigns running on BBC mobile platforms to evaluate mobile advertising effectiveness. The goal is to understand how mobile/tablet advertising efforts shift consumers’ perceptions of the advertising brand through key brand metrics.



RESEARCH FINDING

The results reveal the increasing importance of smartphones to affluent consumers and demonstrate the extent to which mobile devices are integrated into their personal and, crucially, their business lives, as improved technology enables greater engagement with content. The study also provides clear evidence that affluent consumers are significantly more receptive to mobile advertising than the general population.

Mobile device ownership

iPhone ownership is relatively greater among the affluents, in comparison to the general population (42% vs. 30%). Android ownership is the opposite and is more popular among general population (51% vs. 57%). However affluent users in Hong Kong, Germany and India are more likely to choose Android phones than iPhones. Subtle differences were also observed in the survey regarding smartphone models. For example, iPhone 5 is twice more popular among affluents while iPhone 3 is twice more popular among general population users. The study indicates that the affluents tend to own the latest generation smartphone devices, which isn’t a big surprise considering they have more means than the general population and they tend to be early adopters for technology. Interestingly, the survey also shows that affluent population in Asia are 60% more likely to own latest devices than global affluents.

Reliance on mobile devices

One key difference in terms of mobile phone usage between the affluents and the general population is their reliance on mobile devices and the amount of time they spend on these devices for work-related activities. Globally, affluents are 36% more likely than the general population to use their phones as the primary tool for organizing their work life. They are also 35% more likely to agree that increasing amount of their work is accomplished on the phone.

Because the affluents tend to own better mobile devices, the amount of time they spend on their phones also increases as these devices are easy to use and make them become more efficient. Half of affluents in Asia get online via mobile devices each hour, vs. 40% globally. Owners of the latest generation devices2) spend twice as much time on them as owners of older devices. Sixty-one percent of affluents in Asia use their mobile phones for business and 58% said their phones are indispensible. Mobile phones are more important to the lives of affluent consumers than the rest of the population, and ownership of the latest handsets tends to raise their role even higher.



Consumption of news on mobile devices

The consumption of news is one of the major uses for mobile devices today. Because immediacy matters to this time- pressed population, more than half (51%) of all Hong Kong affluents, for example, prefer accessing news information from their mobile phones than desktops. In fact, 61% of them spend five hours or more consuming current affairs or breaking news every week.

The survey emphasises the growing trend for news consumption on mobile platforms and reflects the results of the BBC’s 2012 ‘Connecting the Story: a multi-platform news consumption study’3 in which: 59% of affluent consumers expected to consume more news on their phones over the next five years. Additionally, the 2012 study found that news consumption on mobiles was mainly restricted to scanning news headlines. In comparison, 34% of new handset users surveyed in ‘Affluent Connection’ say they now dive deeper when consuming news and are likely to read additional articles connected the original piece. Owners of the latest handsets globally are also 10% more likely than the general population to watch news video or stream content on their mobile phones. In Asia, video consumption is fairly prevalent and is used more commonly regardless of device’s manufacture year.

Mobile advertising

The survey shows that receptiveness to advertising messages on mobile devices is on par with that on desktop, which is seen perceived as a mature medium for digital advertising in many countries. This trend is even more visible in Asia, where both mediums received same interest levels (60%) among the affluents. In Hong Kong, advertising messages received from mobile devices are actually perceived more positively by the affluent population than those that appear on desktop devices (71% vs. 69%).

FIGURE2.



There are different reactions towards mobile advertising formats. Globally, the most favourable mobile advertising format among the affluents is pre-roll (40%; it’s the advertising message that plays right before video content starts) followed by the MPU unit (39%). The format that received the most attention level is MPU (80%) followed by full-page interstitial (79%). In Asia, the most favourable and attention grabbing format is MPU.

Other key findings and regional differences include:

• 51% of affluent consumers use their mobile phone for business. That’s 28% higher than the general population. Among Asian countries surveyed, the differences are highest in India (155 index).

• News apps are the most commonly used mobile phone apps for affluent consumers, whilst social network apps are favoured by the general population. This difference however isn’t observed in Australia, for example.

• A third of affluent consumers agree that, if a brand wants to be modern and dynamic, it needs to be on mobile – 15% higher than the general population. The same statement is even higher in Hong Kong, where 41% affluents agreed.

• Morethanone inthreeaffluentAustralians(34%)areaccessingnewsonmobilephonesdirectly

vianewssitesasopposedtoviaapps(22%).Thisisdifferentfromtheglobaltrendwhereappsare

preferred(37%vs.26%).

• 52%ofaffluentconsumersinIndiaaremorelikelytosharestoriesonmobileratherthandesktop

vs.49%affluentsinHongKong.

• Affluent consumers are as positive towards advertising onmobile (19%) as desktop (18%). The

percentagethatarehappytoseeadsonmobilewebsitesrisesto41%forsiteswherethecontent

isfree.

Mobile advertising effectiveness

Effectiveness of mobile advertising is the key question to the media agencies. To provide answers Millward Brown dove into their database of mobile campaigns that they have researched in recent years. They specifically selected 114 campaigns where they had sufficient demographic data on respondents to



compare the impact of mobile ads on the most affluent 20% of consumers vs. the general population. These case studies, covering a range of product categories and targeting various countries, were based on over 400,000 respondents so we can be sure that changes were statistically significant.

Key findings from Millward Brown’s findings are mobile advertising is twice as effective as the proven desktop in driving key brand metrics such as awareness, favourability and purchase intent amongst the total population. This figure rises to four times as effective for affluent consumers: +4.7% vs. +2.4% for aided brand awareness, +12.5% vs. +3.3% for brand favourability and +16.8% vs. 2.7% for purchase intent.

BBC MOBILE CASE STUDY

In an effort to demonstrate mobile advertising effectiveness on BBC platforms, the BBC and Millward Brown conducted case studies using an actual advertising creative for a luxury fragrance brand and an art museum in Europe. Separate short surveys were sent to adults aged 18+ years who reside in these clients’ target countries between December 2013 and March 2014. Millward Brown force exposed respondents to the MPU advertisement embedded on the BBC’s mobile site which was viewed on their mobile devices (see figure 3). Questions were then asked about these brand’s key metrics such as awareness, message association and purchase intent, etc. FIGURE 3.

The results showed that the luxury fragrance brand’s mobile campaign performed well on the BBC’s mobile site especially in ad awareness where those who were exposed to the MPU on mobile devices averaged a +125% uplift to the controlled group. Purchase intent of the advertised fragrance also increased by +88%.



The results showed that the art museum’s mobile campaign performed well on the BBC’s mobile site especially in making it the first choice when selecting a museum to visit among the affluent population (+120%). In terms of intent to visit, the mobile campaign received a +53% uplift compared to the controlled group.

CONCLUSION

Advertising on mobile represents an opportunity to reach affluent consumers when they are genuinely engaged on a device that is important to them. Affluents recognise that advertising enables them to enjoy the benefits of the connected world and this makes them more positive than the general population towards mobile advertising. This attitude, coupled with the advances in handset technology which mean that ads load quickly without slowing down the user experience, have made affluent consumers more responsive to mobile advertising.

Millward Brown’s work in this area, based on numerous case studies and hundreds of thousands of respondents, shows overwhelmingly that mobile is working even harder for advertisers than the long-proven desktop medium, especially among affluent consumers.

At the BBC, consumption of our news content from mobile devices, either via mobile website/browser or apps, is experiencing rapid speed of traffic growth. According to Adobe Omniture, half of all BBC news web pages consumed in APAC were from mobile devices. To meet this growing demand of mobile consumption, we’ve been working on and investing in new technology that allow us to provide our users the best browsing experience.

FIGURE 4.

For example, we’ve been implementing Responsive Design technology to our web pages since 2012. This technology resizes BBC’s web pages to provide the optimized reading format to different mobile



devices. When all BBC web pages are fully responsive, users will be able to consume BBC news articles or videos via our desktop site or mobile site in exactly the same format. Another example is that we’re working to provide dedicated mobile editions for key markets. In April (target date), we aim to launch BBC.com homepage edition on mobile devices in India, in time for the India General Election.

This tailored homepage will bring India related headlines to the surface of the site, as we already do on desktop, to our loyal audience in India.

ENDNOTES

1. Mobile Researcher of the Year, Mobile Marketer, December 2013.

2. Latest handsets defined as those released after September 2012 while old handsets defined as those released before October 2011.

3. Key findings from BBC’s 2012 study ‘Connecting the Story’ can be downloaded via http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/worldnews/news-consumption.html.

THE AUTHORS Sally Wu is is a Fellow of the Institute on Asian Consumer Insight and as a Research Director, Business & Audience Insights for BBC Global News, Asia Pacific. Her research interests lie in the area of Media, Commercial Research & Marketing Research. Rob Valsler is Regional Director of Asia Pacific, Millward Brown, Singapore

white paper newsflash: reaching asia’s high income earners...in brand and communications research...

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