Why Memory Matters More Than Clicks in Advertising

Have you ever wondered if your advertising dollars are truly making an impact? We often focus on immediate engagement, but what about the lasting impression your brand leaves? Let's explore the importance of memory in advertising, a key factor often overlooked in campaign reports. Dr. Hamish McPharlin, explains why memory is crucial and how Element Human's research sheds light on using it to achieve brand goals.

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The Problem with Traditional Advertising Metrics

End-of-Campaign Reports: A Flawed Picture

When a brand invests in advertising, they expect results. Typically, those results are presented in an end-of-campaign report. But how accurate are these reports in reflecting the real impact of advertising? Let's look at some common metrics:

• Impressions: This counts every ad served, regardless of whether it was actually seen. An ad loading on a page counts as an impression.
• Frequency: This tells you the average number of times someone might have seen your ad.
• Unique Browsers: Because it's hard to track people across different devices, many media owners estimate reach using "unique browsers" instead of actual people reached.
• Viewability: This metric emerged to show what percentage of paid-for impressions were actually viewable on the screen.

The Click-Through Rate Conundrum

Engagement is frequently measured by one thing: click-through rate (CTR). How many people saw the ad and clicked on it? It seems straightforward. But is it?

Typical CTRs are extremely low, often around 0.15%. This means that out of everyone who sees an ad, very few actively engage with it by clicking. These low CTRs are typical. They highlight a problem: are we really capturing the full impact of our advertising?

Reaching Isn't Enough: The Journey to Sales

Brands pay to reach audiences. However, reach is just the first step on the long path to a sale. Can we measure the ROI of a campaign if we only look at the 0.15% who clicked? What about the rest? Does a low click-through rate mean the advertising was ineffective? Not necessarily.

The Power of Memory Banking

The "Memory Bank It For Later" Moment

Consider this story. In a focus group, a participant once said she doesn't always act immediately. She said she likes to "memory bank it for later." She loved an ad and thought it convinced her of a product's benefits. Instead of taking immediate action, she filed it away in her memory.

This raises a good point: What about all the people who see ads and "memory bank" them without clicking? Their interest isn't reflected in typical metrics.

Memory: A Consolidated View of Future Actions

People rarely make immediate purchases after seeing an ad. Think about it. Do you book a flight the day you see an airline ad? Do you open a bank account the second you see an ad? Do you rush out to buy a car immediately after viewing an advertisement? No. You "memory bank it" for later.

So, when the time comes to make a purchase decision, will your brand be remembered? That's the key question. Memory is a more consolidated view of exactly what's going to happen.

Measuring Memory: From Old School to Neuroscience

The Decay Effect: An Old-School Approach

How do you measure how well people remember your ad? One older method is measuring the decay effect. Researchers would show an ad to a group of people. Then, they'd call participants at different intervals. They might call 20% of the group a week later, another 20% two weeks later, and so on. They'd ask each person what they remembered about the ad. This created data showing how recall declined over time. How quickly did the memory of the ad fade?

Neuroscience and Long-Term Memory Encoding

These days, there are more advanced methods. Neuroscience can help us understand how the brain encodes long-term memories. For example, Neuro-Insight uses a technique called steady state topography. This measures electrical activity in brain areas linked to long-term memory encoding. If activity spikes as someone watches an ad, it suggests the experience is being stored in long-term memory.

Emotion and Memory: The Element Human & Neuro-Insight Study

The Science of Memory

Element Human partnered with Neuro-Insight to study the relationship between emotion and memory. The goal? To see if emotion is a key driver of memory for advertising. You can read more about this in the BBC's The Science of Memory Study.

Emotion as a Key Driver of Memory Encoding

The study revealed that emotion is indeed a key driver of memory encoding. When people watched ads that moved them, researchers saw spikes in both emotion and memory encoding. Emotion drives peaks in memory encoding.

Intensity Matters More Than Positivity

Interestingly, it wasn't just positive emotions that mattered. Sadness, anger, disgust, and fear also drove memory encoding. The key factor was the intensity of the emotion.

More Peaks of Emotion, Better Memory

The more emotional peaks a piece of content had, the better it was remembered. For instance, content with five emotional peaks ranked in the top 46% for memorability. Content with twelve peaks ranked in the top 18%.

Emotional Time: The Influencer Study

Emotional Intelligence Study

Recently, Element Human worked with an influencer agency called Influencer to further explore the link between emotion and memory. See Influencer's Emotional Intelligence Study for more details.

The Correlation Between Time and Brand Memory

This time, instead of counting emotional peaks, they measured how long someone spent above a certain emotional threshold. The results were compelling. The more time spent at a higher level of emotional intensity, the better the brand memory. The longer you remember a brand, the more likely you are to recall it when it's time to buy.

Key Takeaways for Building Brand Memory

So, what have we learned about building brand memory?

• Emotion Time: The more time your audience spends at a high degree of emotional intensity, the more they'll remember your brand.
• Intensity is Key (But Relevance Matters): The emotion doesn't have to be positive. The intensity is what counts. However, it must be relevant to your brand. If you're trying to make people laugh, but they cry, something's gone wrong.
• Wrapping Your Brand in Emotion: Creating emotional intensity triggers long-term memory. When the buying decision comes, the emotion will be associated with your brand.
• Conceptual Closure: Don't Rush the Brand Moment: Give your audience time to process the message and commit it to memory. Don't move on too quickly after an emotional moment. Audiences experience "conceptual closure."

When you hit that moment, give it some breathing space to make sure that brand will not be forgotten.

Memory takes time. When we consume something and put it into memory, the brain has to kick in a gear and process that, and write it to memory. Think about writing it to a hard drive. If you show a brand and have an emotional moment, but then immediately switch to something else, you're going to interrupt the processing of that moment into long-term memory.

We have a fast-paced society. We have extremely short windows of attention. The tendency is to move as fast as possible, but the science tells us when you hit that moment, give it some breathing space to make sure that brand will not be forgotten, because audiences experience conceptual closure, they need to close that chapter, and we need to allow them the time to get that brand into memory.

Wrapping Things Up

Memory is a fascinating and crucial aspect of advertising. By focusing on emotion, intensity, and allowing for conceptual closure, brands can create lasting impressions that drive future sales. As we move further into 2025, let's shift our focus from simple clicks to the power of memory.