I recently attended the annual conference of ESOMAR – the umbrella association of research institutes, held in Athens.

The conference, which unsurprisingly focused on AI, also presented various studies in the fields of advertising. One of them, conducted on behalf of Amazon Ads, focused on understanding the impact of music and sound on ad performance.

The study presented examined which creative elements contribute to increasing viewer engagement, brand recall, and purchase intention.

The findings presented in the study provide interesting insights into how to use music, sound, and narration tone most effectively in order to maximize ad performance.

Background Music in Ads – Advantages and Disadvantages

The study findings clearly indicate that using background music in ads increases viewer engagement. However, be careful – unbranded music may have a negative impact on brand recall. In other words, although music contributes to the emotional involvement of the audience, it may distract from the brand itself if it is not aligned with the main marketing message.

Narration – the tone matters

Regarding the tone of narration in advertisements, the study showed that a serious tone manages to generate higher engagement among viewers. A light or conversational tone, on the other hand, was found to be less effective in terms of engagement. However, when it comes to brand recall, the tone of narration is not always an influential factor, and an interesting finding is that narration with an enthusiastic or positive tone does not strengthen brand recall more than other tones.

Frequency of brand mentions – key to recall

The study emphasized that the way to improve brand recall is through a number of accurate mentions. Advertisements in which the brand was mentioned at least twice managed to generate higher brand recall than advertisements in which there was only one mention. This is an important element in designing TV and audio commercials, especially when the goal of the campaign is to strengthen the connection between the brand and the viewer.

Call to action (CTA) – good for engagement, less for purchase

Although research has shown that a clear call to action increases viewer engagement with an ad, another interesting finding is that it does not directly affect purchase intent. In other words, although a CTA is an important advertising tool, it does not necessarily improve the likelihood of a purchase.

What’s new?

The impact of music and tone on ad performance has been recognized in the industry for years, and in Israel we have also seen their importance in the copy testing and effectiveness studies we conducted using the AdWiser and AdTracker models.

The uniqueness of Amazon’s current study is the interesting and specific insights it provides regarding the specific impact of music and tone on various components of an ad’s effectiveness. Insights that can be started and implemented as early as tomorrow morning.

At least they managed to get my attention.

With me