Unruly study sees brand recall improve with social video recommendations

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Posted 07 February 2012 10:32am by Vikki Chowney with 0 comments

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Social video platform Unruly has today released findings that suggest viewers are far more likely to recall a brand name and engage with an ad's message if a brand-led video has been recommended to them.

Carried out by Decipher Research, the study spoke to 976 18-34 year olds online, discovering that brand recall and association rose 7% among viewers who had been recommended the videos versus viewers that found them by browsing.

Additionally, 73% of those that viewed a recommended video recalled the brand when prompted compared to just 68% of viewers who had arrived at the video directly.

There was also a 14% increase in the number of people who said they enjoyed the video following a recommendation versus those who had discovered it by browsing. Those who enjoyed a video were 97% more likely to purchase the product featured in the video.

Unruly COO Sarah Wood reiterated that social video is a powerful format for engaging consumers that shouldn't be underestimated.

If a brand creates great video content and makes it easy to share, it will see impressive results across the entire purchase funnel." 

The study is based on four social video campaigns from Guinness, Coca-Cola, Unilever's Cornetto and Energizer. Viewers could opt in to the survey directly from an annotation within the Unruly video player or from the video's YouTube page.

The data gathered following a recommendation was compared with that of viewers who had arrived at the video by browsing, to determine the effects of recommendations on brand metrics and post viewing behaviour. 

At the beginning of the year Unruly head of content David Waterhouse summarised some of Unruly's social video trends for 2012, with one key aspect being stronger use of video by brands.

Social video is emerging as the format of choice for planners and strategists with an eye on the long game. The honeymoon for the 15-second pre-roll ad is coming to an end as advertisers demand better execution and cut-through and move budgets from push formats towards pull solutions; even pre-roll is starting to morph into an interactive multi-choice medium."

With social video campaigns generating 820m views in 2009, 2.7bn views in 2010, and over 8bn views in 2011, the number of views delivered from social video campaigns are expected to more than double again for 2012. Smarter understanding of how to create more impact within these views will prove to be invaluable.

Unruly has also written a corresponding whitepaper on social advertising effectiveness, which you can download for free here.