LOS ANGELES, CA, Sept. 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ace Metrix, the leader in measuring advertising effectiveness, today released the first ever ranking based on its groundbreaking new Cultural Perception scoring system. The brands recognized as the most empowering in terms of cultural and social issues, with the least chance of negative reaction, outscored thousands of other ads on Ace Metrix’s Empower metric.
The new Cultural Perception scoring system offers advertisers the ability to quantify both the positive and negative impact on culture.
“As media consumption becomes more fragmented or avoided altogether, many brands seek to capture attention and connect emotionally through socially conscious and purpose-driven messaging. But we’ve all seen examples where well-meaning ads land on viewers with unintended negative impact. Measuring Cultural Perception for an ad is critical for brands managing the risk and reward of achieving those emotional connections.” said Peter Daboll, Ace Metrix CEO.
The Empower metric measures the positive impact of an ad’s message, indicating when viewers find it encouraging, inspiring or motivating. The Exploit metric quantifies the negative impact, indicating when ads offend viewers in some manner, whether that’s via stereotyping, pandering, objectification, glorification, portraying racism or sexism, or even a brand attempting to attach themselves to a cause that is not relevant.
Scores for Empower and Exploit are derived from Ace Metrix’s emotion measurement platform, which applies NLP and machine learning techniques to tens of millions of voluntary viewer verbatim comments. Ace Metrix measures the positive and negative cultural impact of all ads, including tens of thousands tested over a decade, providing brands with competitive and historical benchmarks and the ability to track changes over time.
The Most Empowering Ads:
The following ads earned the highest scores on Empower at levels achieved by less than .1% of all ads. Common themes among the list include veterans and narratives about overcoming the odds, whether it’s a physical, mental or social limitation. While brands might believe their causes are indisputably virtuous, there are inherent risks even among seemingly benign, apolitical topics which makes the Cultural Perception scores invaluable to understanding an ad's reception. Even among the top Empowering spots, all but two contained some level of Exploit.
Daboll explains that “It’s not uncommon for purpose driven ads seeking cultural impact to meet some level of risk. Ads can be BOTH positive and negative depending on message and viewer. But, brands that can strike the right balance between an authentic message and empowering and inspiring stories can be highly successful in connecting with viewers through a relevant cultural message.”
| Rank | Brand | Ad Title | Air Date | Length | Empower | Exploit |
| 1 | Budweiser | Serve Our Heroes | 5/24/17 | 0:30 | 100 | 2 |
| 2 (tie) | Nike | Sport Changes Everything: Justin Gallegos | 7/9/19 | 0:30 | 99 | 6 |
| 2 (tie) | AT&T | No Limits | 4/5/17 | 1:00 | 99 | 6 |
| 3 | Citigroup | Making A Change | 10/10/17 | 1:00 | 99 | 7 |
| 4 | Walmart | Share The Love | 6/5/19 | 1:00 | 99 | 22 |
| 5 | Applebee’s | Veteran’s Appreciation | 11/13/16 | 0:30 | 99 | 39 |
| 6 | Citibank | Why Does Citi Sponsor Team USA? | 8/5/16 | 1:00 | 98 | 0 |
| 7 (tie) | NFL | Inspire Change | 2/7/19 | 0:20 | 98 | 1 |
| 7 (tie) | MasterCard | Stand Up | 7/7/17 | 0:30 | 98 | 1 |
| 8 | Citigroup | Progress Makers | 7/5/17 | 1:00 | 98 | 2 |
| 9 (tie) | Comcast | Second Chance | 2/8/18 | 1:00 | 98 | 6 |
| 9 (tie) | Nike | Sport Changes Everything: Maynor De Leon | 7/9/19 | 1:00 | 98 | 6 |
| 10 | Citigroup | Educating Girls | 9/3/18 | 1:00 | 98 | 7 |
*Ranked first by Empower, then Exploit signal
Of course, many brands will “steer clear” of these sensitive cultural storylines, viewing them as landmines that risk their brand acceptance. This is a perfectly logical strategy. The Cultural Perception system quantifies viewer response, allowing brands to know where they stand, where the risks and rewards can be found, and to uncover potential unintended negative cultural consequences of their work.
About Ace Metrix Inc.
Ace Metrix measures ad creative effectiveness based on viewer reaction to video ads, providing the advertising industry an unbiased resource to measure creative impact. Ace Metrix scores every national television and digital ad across 118 categories creating a complete comparative database comprised of over 90,000 ads—Ace Metrix LIVE®. A unique panel of at least 500 consumers, demographically balanced to the U.S. census, scores each ad in the exact same manner. The results are presented on a scale of 1–950, which represents scoring on creative attributes such as Attention, Likeability, Information, Change, Relevance, Desire and Watchability. Ace Metrix also measures the strength of emotional connection in advertising. Scores are passively derived from voluntary respondent verbatim comments using Natural Language Processing and machine learning analysis.
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