New York, NY September 25, 2017 – The Association for National Advertisers (ANA) Alliance for Family Entertainment (AFE) and Advertising Benchmark Index (ABX) were recently awarded the prestigious 2017 ESOMAR Research Effectiveness Award at the annual ESOMAR Congress.
The ESOMAR Research Effectiveness Award recognizes and honors best practices in effectiveness from around the world, with particular emphasis on the measurable impact of research. The award illustrates the value that research brings to decision making in both business and society.
The winning entry, “Reducing Unconscious Bias in Media,” demonstrated that improving gender portrayals in media is not just the right thing to do — it also improves ROI.
ANA AFE launched the #SeeHer movement in 2016 to improve the accurate portrayal of women and girls in advertising and programming by 20 percent by 2020, the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote in the U.S.
The ESOMAR Research Effectiveness Award was presented to ABX and ANA AFE in recognition of the well-defined set of metrics they developed, which serves as the industry scorecard for continuously measuring progress against long-term objectives.
ABX, syndicated research partner to ANA AFE, worked with the #SeeHer team to create the Gender Equality Measure (GEM™). GEM provides measurement standards for ads and television programs and creates accountability for change.
Test results indicated that 4 of 30 variables were shown to best correlate to the ranking of test ads. Scores for those variables were developed into an index which is used as the Gender Equality Measure or GEM™.
Just as researchers have established standards for other KPIs, such as awareness and purchase intent, GEM™ has become the baseline metric for gender equality. Detailed analysis of gender data for advertising shows an important correlation between positive gender scores, positive brand reputation, and higher call-to-action intent. Using this set of variables, ABX has evaluated over 25,000 ads since September 2016.
These metrics are now available in an ABX syndicated program that continuously measures thousands of ads every month, across all media types and categories, among people 18 years of age and older. Additional research was designed and performed by ABX to measure gender bias in TV programming. The same variables that were demonstrated to be enlightening for advertising were also found to be defining for TV programming. More than 300 shows have been evaluated for gender characteristics to date and will be reassessed annually during spring and fall sweeps rating periods.
The award-winning research has been published in ESOMAR’s Research World. To obtain a copy of the winning submission, click here.
About the Advertising Benchmark Index (ABX)
Advertising Benchmark Index, ABX, was founded to enable marketers to evaluate all their ads, and those of their competitors, across all media types through a better, faster (24-hours), lower- cost measurement system. The ABX system enables marketers to move media investment from poor to better-performing creative and to provide robust feedback to their creative teams to improve future ads. ABX offers the largest syndicated and custom advertising effectiveness norms in the world with 125,000 tested across all industries to date.
About the #SeeHer Movement
Despite the strides made to accurately portray women and girls in media, an unconscious bias persists against women and girls in advertising, media and programming. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) Alliance for Family Entertainment (AFE) launched the #SeeHer initiative in June 2016 in a joint partnership with The Female Quotient, after the White House announced the elimination of gender bias in media as critical to the nation’s future. The #SeeHer Initiative mission is to accurately portray all women and girls in media by 2020, the 100th anniversary of women winning the right to vote. For more information, visit www.SeeHer.com, follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
About the Association of National Advertisers (ANA)
The ANA (Association of National Advertisers) provides leadership that advances marketing excellence and shapes the future of the industry. Founded in 1910, the ANA’s membership includes more than 1,000 companies with 15,000 brands that collectively spend over $250 billion in marketing and advertising. The membership is comprised of more than 700 client-side marketers and nearly 300 associate members. The ANA advances the interests of marketers and promotes and protects the well-being of the marketing community. For more information, visit www.ana.net, follow us on Twitter or join us on Facebook.
For more information: www.adbenchmark.com; Angela Jeffrey, 214-926-9794; angie@adbenchmark.com or for the ANA AFE #SeeHer, Patty Kerr, pkerr-cw@ana.net.
