E-commerce sales have soared in the last years and with that, the way people are shopping has changed fundamentally. And now there is Gen Z – a new consumer group that is completely transforming the face of online shopping. A trend we have seen time and time again since the rise of TikTok is its potential to blow up products to unseen highs of virality and almost permanently clear them from the shelves. The power of social media is immense.

But these short-format-based apps are certainly impacting our attention spans. In fact, viewers only spend 2.5s per post, according to Facebook. While 2.5s sounds scarce (because it is), the consumer’s attention in actual physical stores is not that much greater – only 7s!

Of course, researchers and marketers know how precious and hard to obtain attention is in any environment – but the digital arena is way more cutthroat and competitive than anything we’ve seen so far.

Because of the highly competitive environment, the pressure is on brands to find more innovative data and drive successful campaigns. However, researchers usually take the route of extracting data from live analytics via social media platforms, different social media tools, surveys and focus groups. And while these methods can be handy, they are not without some gaps.

First off, they are missing the why – why is a certain trend happening, and why are consumers resonating more with this post instead of that one. Then there’s the reputation risk and the opportunity cost of launching a non-tested ad. And, of course, it’s hard to understand if consumers are connecting with your brand – although extremely important when it comes to advertising, tools like live analytics give no insight into which parts of the post or ads are performing well or how they are directly impacting the in-store purchase behavior. And finally, none of these methods can provide strategic insights both across social media channels and other marketing channels such as TVC, digital, print, OOH.

CMS stands for content management system, which is a computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content. Essentially, it is a platform capable of cloning or rather replicating social media channels and websites.

By developing a replica of the social media environment, the quality of research insights significantly boosts. And the more realistic the environment, the more predictive and precise understanding of authentic consumer behavior! But this also means that you can have full control over the testing in terms of stimuli, the target group, the entire timeline, and its features. Shortly, the study setup is completely customized to your particular research needs. And with the help of an in-house design team, any major social media platform can be recreated – and in it, any format of an ad or content can be tested and optimized!

Testing with combined methods yields higher predictive power and maps out specific elements of an ad that work (or don’t work) with the target audience. As a result, you gain a lot more strategic insights that allow you to create guidelines and frameworks for creative agencies and for developing ads that can be tweaked according to the platform. Especially since each one has unique qualities to it and what works on one, let’s say, putting the brand logo in the left corner on Twitter ads might not work on Instagram, where it needs to be in the bottom right. This is why it’s crucial to pre-test and really understand how your content can be additionally tweaked and optimized for every platform. And that is how we designed this CMS solution – to deliver brands a competitive overview of their ads and content performance across different platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat and Facebook – check out the demo!

For reliable and valid insights, it is crucial to use a mix of behavioral and traditional methods that focus on consumer behavior in the timeline and its impact on sales uplift. Surveys help uncover the why behind ad performance – beyond just the clicks, views and other analytics, but digging deeper into consumer perception.

Eye tracking, in particular, allows granularity into which ad elements are seen and which are often missed, while facial coding identifies whether consumers are engaging with your brand by analyzing their emotions through facial expressions. And virtual shopping provides a direct link between the performance of an ad and in-store purchase behavior with the help of realistic simulated store environments that tap into authentic consumer behavior.

And because of the online and accessible approach, respondents are recruited from anywhere in the world via a third-party panel, allowing studies across different markets, countries and industries. And the best part is that no extra tech is needed – respondents simply use their own laptops or mobile phones during the test.

Every metric and KPI you need to know about your ad performance:

1. Visibility –  how many users have actually seen your content?
2. Attention – how long do they watch it for?
3. Video retention – what are the usual points where you start to lose them?
4. Emotional reach – is the ad resonating with them?
5. Survey KPIs – does it fit with the brand, and do users like it?
6. Sales uplift – does the ad impact sales?

But going beyond these KPIs, it is important to have a holistic view of how the ad performs across different platforms – to gain overarching best practices and guidelines.

Apart from enabling an incredibly nuanced understanding of ad performance, testing content in simulated social media feeds opens opportunities for brands to connect with consumers and explore topics relevant to them. Since this, too, varies from platform to platform, uncovering the sophisticated differences in behavior that would go undetected with traditional social media research tools is crucial! Here are some insights we have accumulated over the years:

Instagram: In one of the most extensive mobile behavioral studies conducted on 1800 respondents in an Instagram environment that tackled brand perception, we uncovered that IG users tend to prefer full body shots, celebrities & female protagonists – for most industries, that is. Ads featuring Female protagonists drive more positive emotions and are evaluated as more attractive and transparent, and this stands for Endorsement and Seasonal ads in particular. 

Twitter: Another study done on a Twitter timeline showed that the key to uplifting sales is that combining and showcasing both brand and product significantly increases the purchase intent. Only showing the brand or product does not have the same impact. Furthermore, the findings showed that placing the brand logo in the upper left corner actually boosts recall!

Facebook: A Facebook study where 26 ads from 6 different industries were tested found that ads from the Food industry were the ones grabbing the most attention – they outperformed other ads on visibility, attention and emotional reach. And – if you can, avoid GIFs! Videos are proven to be far more persuasive, driving both better brand perception and differentiation.