2024 year in review: It’s been a good year for…

Pre-testing

2024 was the year when pre-testing appeared to win over many of its detractors.

Over the decades, there have been many forms of pre-testing and many different companies offering the service. Previously, it was extremely difficult to accurately capture the essence of ads without just basically making a version of the ad, with great expense involved.

The pre-test itself might have focused on driving purchase intent, rather than sales intent. Indeed, when Peter Field and Les Binet wrote The Long and Short of It in 2013, their research revealed pre-tested campaigns outsold non-pre-tested ones over the short term, but in the long term it was the non-pre-tested campaigns that dramatically outsold the pre-tested ones.

The science underpinning pre-testing and the ability of advertisers to produce animatics at relatively low-cost have both improved notably in recent years, meaning the practice is almost unrecognisable from what it once looked like.

Of course, the ability of brands to produce better material to test and the quality of the tests themselves has not suddenly skyrocketed in 2024, but this was the year when the argument for pre-testing becoming an essential part of the effectiveness mix appeared to be well and truly one.

Marketing Week’s own Mark Ritson, once a pre-testing sceptic, argued this year that the practice is now a “no brainer”.

“If you believe pricing or product development is bolstered by consumer research, why would you not think the same about advertising?” he wrote.

Peter Field brought data to the argument, suggesting that – unlike in the past – there is now a positive link between ads that have been quantitatively tested, and pricing power and market share effects.

“Pricing power has always been a key metric associated with powerful emotional brands and the improvements in pre-testing have seen a radical turnaround in the apparent ability to promote pricing power,” Field stated.

Nothing is ever universally agreed upon, particularly among the marketing industry, and pre-testing is no different. Yet this year, advocates made their arguments more convincingly than ever that it should be a crucial step in marketers’ advertising planning. NC

Consistency

Consistency was identified as one of Marketing Week’s agenda items for 2024 and brands have certainly taken note.

As Mark Ritson said just a few months ago, “consistency is the top-class marketer’s secret weapon”. Data from Kantar, System1 and Analytic Partners in 2023 also highlighted that ads do not ‘wear-out’, meaning consistency is key.

This year, Johnnie Walker celebrated 25 years of its ‘Keep Walking’ slogan and Cadbury reached its 200th anniversary, saying it’s continuing with a “consistent message of generosity”.

Puma’s global brand and marketing director also told Marketing Week that “if we want to send a message to the consumer, we need to repeat the same message over and over”. The sportswear giant credited its summer campaign with driving its “best ever” brand visibility thanks to its consistent message.

In the B2B world, consistency has also been key to brand-building this year, with Amanda Jobbins of Vodafone Business arguing “the way your brand looks, feels and sounds needs to be the same across all communications, touchpoints and markets”.

LinkedIn’s B2B branding report found that for the last 10 to 20 years, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google and Microsoft have all resisted the temptation to “change or refresh” their brand logos, with software company Typeform another B2B firm that has succeeded with a consistent brand.

As the year rounds out with Christmas, we’ve seen brands successfully stick with their distinctive brand assets. M&S Food returned with Dawn French’s fairy, Aldi brought back Kevin the Carrot for the ninth time and Coca-Cola stuck with its famous truck, albeit in a different way – with all these ads achieving a 5.9 System1 rating. Another consistent year for consistency. AV

AI going mainstream

If 2023 was the year generative AI entered the public consciousness, then 2024 was when it broke through into the mainstream.

No longer spoken about in hushed tones with vague ideas of what it could achieve, gen AI has been a key part of some of the biggest campaigns of the year. Take Coca-Cola’s complete overhaul of its famous ‘Holidays are Coming’ campaign in AI. Something that would have been thought of as unthinkable just a few months ago, the ad is now scoring 5.9 on System1’s Test Your Ad platform.

Coke wasn’t the only brand that brought gen AI into public consumption. O2 released an AI granny that was meant to deter scam callers, Yum! Brands hailed AI personalisation as a driver of positive quarter results and AI Overviews were introduced to Google, forever changing how consumers interact with the search engine.

With senior marketers from the likes of Infosys, Intuit Mailchimp and Reckitt all hailing the impact AI has already had – and will continue to have on the function – it is fair to say any notion that gen AI would be little more than a fad seem to be fading rapidly.

Yet, despite all the advancements that have been made by gen AI in 2024, there’s no shortage of voices urging caution when it comes to the nascent technology. From the ASA warning brands that “ignorance” is no excuse when it comes to failing foul of the guidelines around AI, to the host of celebrities and publishers railing against what they see as being stolen intellectual property, there’s no shortage of hurdles for gen AI in 2025 as regulations come into view.

We’ve heard the talk, we’ve seen the walk, in 2025 it’s time to see if gen AI can run. JS

Use of distinctive assets

If this year’s crop of Christmas ads has shown us anything, it’s that sustained use of brand mascots is worth its weight in mince pies. Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot returned for his ninth outing, M&S reprised its Dawn French-fronted fairy, Very enlisted its pink flamingos again, Morrisons dusted down its oven gloves and Argos brought back Trevor the dinosaur and Connie the doll.

Meanwhile, Asda unveiled its Christmas gnomes, as the retailer looks to build greater equity in its own characters.

“This campaign is a sign of the distinctiveness we want to have as a brand, the equity we want to own,” chief customer office David Hills told us.

Likewise, The Entertainer introduced its sad and abandoned cuddly toy Ray, as it embarked on its first brand building festive campaign, a plan it hopes will “drive saliency” and “fame”. Both Asda and The Entertainer are likely looking to emulate the long-term success of Kevin and his pals, building emotional resonance and mental availability for their brands.

But mascots aren’t just for Christmas. Peperami brought back its animated meat stick ‘Animal’ in April in an attempt to increase relevance among adults, many of whom – 81% according to its research – remember him fondly from their youth.

“I knew it was such a strong memory asset for the brand,” Emily Prince, head of brand at parent company Jack Link’s, told Marketing Week. In an increasingly saturated market, having a brand asset as instantly recognisable as Animal is a major advantage.

And it’s not just mascots. Brands have been increasingly looking to dial up their use of distinctive assets in 2024. Carlsberg decided it wanted to make more of the hop leaf that sits above its logo, with global brand director Lyndsey Woods admitting it has been underused. She thinks it will be crucial in helping the beer brand be “recognised quickly and easily” going forward.

Consistency is key to ensuring distinctive assets bed in, whether it’s mascots, colours, logos or audio cues. But having spent years establishing their importance, both British Airways and Tesco played with their brand codes to great effect this year.

BA’s ‘Windows’ campaign, which featured close-ups of its planes and just a hint of its logo, achieved the airline’s highest ad awareness since January 2023, up 73%.

Tesco caused much furore when it replaced the letters of its logo with produce starting with the same initial. While some called it “underwhelming”, Mark Ritson said they were missing its “sublime cleverness”. Referencing the Zeigarnik effect, he said by making viewers work to fill in the blanks, Tesco succeeded in engaging consumers to remember it “much better and for longer”.

But it only works because Tesco has done the hard work of establishing and reinforcing its logo for the past 35 years. And that’s again why consistency is so important. LT

Ad-funded streaming

The battle for viewership between the global streaming giants and traditional TV broadcasters has been fierce for years, but this year it took another turn as the fight for advertising spend turned up.

Advertising-based video on demand (AVoD) experienced solid growth this year, as the streaming industry shifts from growth through subscribers to growth through ad sales.

According to Kantar’s Entertainment on Demand report, ad-supported streaming beat the total video streaming market in Q3 2024. Disney+, Max, Paramount+, Netflix and Peacock’s AVoD offerings all grew by more than 5%, while their subscription video on demand (SVoD) subscribers numbers declined.

In its recent earnings, Netflix said its ad-supported tier has reached 70 million global monthly active users, with more than 50% of its new sign-ups for ad-supported plans. In August, Disney’s streaming business became profitable for the first time after introducing an ad-supported tier in the US at the end of last year.

Meanwhile, ITVX enjoyed a “strong” performance in the first quarter of 2024, with hours streamed on the platform increasing 16% compared to the same period last year.

Streamers are also trading down from their paid ad-free subscriptions to paid ad-supported ones, with 15% of SVoD subscribers in June 2024 trading down to AVoD by September 2024, according to Kantar.

However, as trading down from ad-free to ad-supported represents an opportunity for brands and additional ad revenue for streaming services, Kantar found in Q3 only 16% of customers were happy with the relevance of ads shown to them. This suggests marketers have work to do in developing context expertise and quality creative. GG

First-party data

This year marked a shift in how brands approach first-party data, driven by Google’s flip-flopping stance on third-party cookies.

Google had been planning to deprecate third-party cookies since 2020 and marketers were urged to prepare for the impending demise. However, in July Google backflipped and confirmed it will no longer phase out third-party cookies in Chrome, instead proposing an “updated approach”.

Despite the change in plans, advice to brands remained largely the same – carry on planning, if not for a cookieless world, then one where cookies are far less relied upon. The focus shifted to building first-party data – direct user interactions with owned channels – instead of relying on Google’s third-party tools.

At the beginning of the year, IAB’s State of Data report outlined that 71% of brands, agencies and publishers expected to increase their first-party datasets, nearly double the rate from two years ago. The types of first-party data being collected by companies include contact info (84%), device (81%), transactions (73%), content consumption (70%) and location (69%).

These efforts seem to have made some momentum. A recent survey revealed 83% of advertisers expect to increase their reliance on first-party data in the near future.

Despite 2024 being a ‘good year’ for first-party data, collecting it is only half the battle. In 2025, brands need to analyse, activate and protect their data to ensure their competitive edge. GG

Retail media

Retail media has been growing wildly over the past few years, but rather than starting to plateau, brands’ obsession with the channel only increased in 2024.

Globally, retail media is forecast to rise 16.4% in the last quarter of 2024 to $46.2bn (£36.5bn), while in the UK alone it is expected to pass £3.2bn across the year, according to estimates from WARC. Interest is showing no signs of slowing down, with forecasts suggesting UK spend on retail media will almost double by 2027.

So fast is spend on retail media growing that it is expected to draw level with linear TV ad spend for the first time this year, before overtaking it in 2025, according to WARC figures.

As spend ramps up, many new players have entered the fray. Co-op launched The Co-op Media Network in January, claiming to be the first to offer brands access to customer data in the UK’s convenience store space.

Then in September Ocado unveiled Ocado Ads, which head of the network, Jack Johnson, said would be different from other retail media networks thanks to its online-first operating model.

A few days later, The Very Group launched its new proposition Very Media Group, which chief customer officer Jessica Myers described as a “reimagined” offer that consolidates the company’s existing capabilities.

It wasn’t just retailers looking to capitalise on selling ad space to brands. In travel, Expedia Group launched its Travel Media Network, while in finance Chase launched Chase Media Solutions, which it claimed to be “the only bank-led media platform of its kind”.

As retail media continues to grow, brands looking to advertise on the networks have been rethinking team set-ups to ensure they are best placed to take advantage of the opportunity.

Colin Lewis, director of Retail Media Works, told Marketing Week more brands are building central teams to clearly define retail media’s role in the organisation, marking a shift from the past 10 to 15 years. Entropy MMM founder Alex Tait explained the challenge now lies in deciding who “owns” retail media.

“Retail media is a good example of how brands need to be working increasingly cross-functionally across teams to plan, target and measure it effectively,” he said. LT