Measuring the Effectiveness of True Sponsorship

Twenty-eight studies were conducted for leading advertisers to measure the persuasion of sponsorship without advertising on the internet. Experimental design maintained identical content except for the sponsorship message in the test group missing from the control group. The two groups were random replicates. Persuasion measures used were those accepted by the advertisers involved as being most predictive of sales. Average lift in purchase intent/brand consideration was 29 percent, which compares to an average lift of 4 percent across all ARS Persuasion tests. Across the 28 studies the results were consistent in 100 percent of cases, with the test group higher than the control group. Statistical significance was achieved in virtually all cases at 95 percent confidence. In a different study, the sponsored content was specifically courseware offered free on the internet by major advertisers. Here the measurement was ROI based on a questionnaire self-report of brand purchase and price paid. Sample size was over 196,000 intab questionnaires with a 65 percent response rate. ROI for sponsored educational content averaged 55:1, about 27 times the published average of all MMA ROI results. The latter study also obtained supplementary measures of satisfaction, increased brand perception, brand promoter, willingness to take future courses, etc., the results of which were highly positive and hence strongly supportive of the ROI results. These studies point strongly to a major role for classical “True” sponsorship in the future of advertising in all media, including internet, linear TV, VOD, mobile, etc.