For decades, subliminal messaging – the art of sending someone a message that influences the recipient even though they do not perceive it consciously – has been a hot potato for marketers. Research – most research – indicated that it worked. But advertisers didn’t want to admit they used it as a marketing tactic, which just made consumers more and more suspicious that advertising was being deployed to unwittingly manipulate their minds.

Now, in the 2020s, with the topic of attention front-and-center in the advertising industry, it’s worth revisiting the concept. Sure, subliminal advertising works in theory. But:

• Is it still as effective in today’s world of always-on messaging?
• Is it ethical to grab consumers’ attention when they aren’t even aware of it?

Let’s backtrack a bit. Subliminal advertising was a hot potato the minute it first surfaced in the late 1950s. With consumers uncomfortable with the idea they were being influenced subconsciously by marketers, advertising and manipulation became synonymous in the public’s mind. It was the Cold War, after all, and there was a general fear of brainwashing, spying and the invasion of privacy.

Despite consumer fears and distaste, in 1958 the Advertising Research Foundation issued a report entitled, “The Application of Subliminal Perception in Advertising,” which concluded that in certain instances human subjects are capable of responding to stimuli which are so weak in intensity, duration, size or clarity, that they are not consciously aware of them. Around the same time, Vance Packard published his highly influential book, “The Hidden Persuaders,” claiming that consumers “are being monitored, managed, and manipulated outside our conscious awareness by advertisers.”

But even half a century later, subliminal messaging was still a bogeyman. In the 2000s, a TV viewer triggered a media frenzy when they spotted what they believed to be a subliminal message embedded in the Food Network TV show “Iron Chef.” When a particular clip of the show was slowed down and viewed frame by frame, a McDonald’s logo appeared for 1/30th of a second. Barbara Lippert, former columnist for Adweek, explained it as “a flash frame that came up at the wrong time.” A spokesperson for the Food Network argued that it was “a technical error…definitely not a subliminal message!” McDonald’s issued the statement, “we don’t do subliminal advertising.”

The debate has long gone unsettled, as there was scarce evidence of subliminal advertising driving brand outcomes – in part because virtually no agency or advertiser was willing to admit that it engaged in the practice. Nonetheless, instances like these fed the idea that subliminal ads are happening beneath the level of real, attentive consciousness.

But consider this: a lot of advertising is processed subliminally, whether it’s intended to contain a hidden message or not. Ross Wilhelm, a prolific marketing professor at the University of Michigan from the 60s through the 80s, argued that every time we drive past a billboard we likely receive a subliminal suggestion. Each time we flip through a magazine we probably receive subliminal messages from ads we aren’t really paying attention to. And when we flip past a TV channel during a commercial break, we are probably receiving subliminal reminders. In lieu of his position, the impact of social media, feeds, reels and the like probably fit the bill too.

All these exposures beneath the surface may have a true impact. Conventional neuroscience suggests our subconsciousness takes in millions of bits of information simultaneously, while our consciousness can only deal with many magnitudes less – a few dozen bits at a time. There’s a lot of information we’re taking in and processing without consciously knowing it.

Here’s the problem today. Consumers see so many ads, at such a constant pace, that the ability to absorb a message is hampered by just how many other messages are bombarding them at the same time. So even if subliminal advertising works – and even if it works well – the landscape has changed. Metaphorically, there isn’t just one McDonald’s logo flashing in the background of our lives. That McDonald’s logo is contending with dozens, even hundreds of other brand messages that may flash by our eyes in a given minute.

But there’s more that we can learn here. What if the decades-long revulsion to the idea of subliminal advertising isn’t really rooted in Cold War-era paranoia, but in the fact that humans inherently prefer to be in control of what they process?

Infillion published a report earlier this year that walked through the spectrum of attention, proving that business outcomes for brands are strongest when consumers pay attention willingly, interact with the brand, and receive something in exchange. This type of attention, which we call “experiential attention,” seems like it would be the opposite of subliminal advertising. But it’s more complex than that. Subliminal messages lie in murky waters, stuck in limbo somewhere between disruption and continuity. They’re not nearly as annoying as a sudden pop-up ad when you’re in the middle of reading a news article. You may willingly and innocently glance at a logo, perhaps even lingering on it, totally oblivious to that logo’s ulterior motives.

For example, fast food chains often use red and yellow in their branding, because these colors are known to stimulate appetite and energy. Is that message of “Get hungry!” a true “disruption” if the consumer isn’t consciously aware that their brain is being bombarded with that signal? Probably not. But is it the most effective way to drive customer loyalty? Definitely not.

Tricking consumers into paying attention to an ad just isn’t a great look for a brand. While logo tricks are quick and fun, when it comes to genuine brand-building, “honest people don’t hide their deeds,” to quote Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights. Impactful treatment by brands comes from messaging that is delivered with real conscious attention, across meaningful time durations, in uncontroversial, privacy-compliant ways.

Want to learn more about ads that get people to pay meaningful attention? Check out our TrueX Engagement Showcase here.

There’s a famous old saying in our industry that says, “Half my advertising spend is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” It’s typically attributed to one of a handful of midcentury advertising titans – but fittingly, it’s unclear who actually said it, if anyone ever did.

That’s a far cry from today’s advertising landscape, where digital ads can be deployed with peak efficiency and tracked precisely from targeting to post-campaign measurement. You, as a marketer, know exactly which of your ads worked, and if they didn’t, what you can do to fix them.

The problem is that this efficiency has come at a tremendous cost both in terms of finances and labor. One estimate found that the average enterprise uses an average of 120 marketing technology tools. That’s a lot of software subscriptions to pay for, a lot of employees who need to be trained to use them, and a lot of headaches when one piece of software doesn’t “talk” to another. Marketers find their media dreams restricted by budget, logistics, and a lack of interoperability. The seemingly infinite possibilities of digital marketing suddenly become a lot less promising, especially as marketers find it even more difficult to balance the need to build a brand with the imperative to drive sales in the short term. Our ads are efficient – but are they effective?

At Advertising Week New York 2024, Infillion chief growth officer Laurel Rossi moderated a panel that addressed this topic, called “Consumers Have Infinite Media Choices. Why Don’t Advertisers?” She was joined by David Rusli, chief strategy officer of Wavemaker; Jinu Peyeti, senior director of audience, insights, and measurement at Albertsons Media Collective; Jatinder Singh, global head of data and AI at Accenture Song; and Amanda DeVito, chief marketing officer at Butler/Till.

“Paradoxes have driven this business for as long as I’ve been in it,” Rossi said. “Brand versus demand. Efficiency versus effectiveness.” So, she asked the panelists, what do they do to address it?

“I think the challenge we all face is that efficiency without effectiveness is like hitting a bullseye on the wrong target, and effectiveness without efficiency is like watching the most incredible fireworks show you’ve ever seen and knowing that it’s going to fizzle out because you don’t have the resources,” Amanda DeVito said. “I love programmatic, I love being able to hyper-target, I love data driven strategy – I love all that, especially coming from a media perspective, but I think we have to balance that with brand health.”

Jatinder Singh said that marketers need to start from the middle, describing the gulf between pure brand advertising and performance-driven programmatic ads as “these beautiful things that nobody sees [and] these ugly things that everybody sees.”

Being selective with the right technology vendors is key. “For me, the technology is the enabler and obviously we will work with our clients to ensure that we partner with the right ecosystem partners to put the right infrastructure and operations in place,” Singh said. “We no longer have the false binary of ‘I need to build a brand’ or ‘I need to build an ad.’ We need to do both.”

Coming from the retail media side of the business – a sector that has been rapidly adding even more tools and options for marketers – Jinu Peyeti recognizes the complexity afoot. “Figuring out what works for your business takes a lot longer than it should…We need to build an ecosystem, platforms, tools, technologies that reduce the cost of testing and get us to a point where all of our media is measured on incrementally and that is when we’re going to know what really works,” she said. “I would seek out vendors that are solving a problem that I am already currently facing. I will not just listen to vendor pitches without knowing what the problem is that it will solve for me.”

In other words, Peyeti phrased it hypothetically: “I have these problems that I’m trying to solve. How can I solve it with maximum integration and minimum number of new vendors? How does this fit into my long term technology stack and plan?”

David Rusli suggested that this can be achieved by asking the question of not just what a vendor can to do target or measure, but how that targeting or measurement can, in addition, serve the broader purpose of building a brand. “I think there’s no point of adding new tech or new tools just for the sake of adding new stuff. In fact, what we really really need is one holistic platform that connects all this different tech, all these different tools,” he said. By cutting down on the red tape and added logistics, marketers can then free up some energy to focus on the bigger picture. “We are here to build long lasting brands and to do that effectiveness has to be our number one source of truth.”

Interested in simplifying your marketing tech stack? Infillion’s team would love to chat with you.

It’s common for people to think of the post-summer, pre-winter holiday time as “spooky season,” and with good reason. The days are growing shorter. Leaves are dying and falling to the ground. Flowers disappear for the next several months. After a sunny summer spent largely outside, and before the cheerful season of gatherings and year-end celebrations: that’s when the ghosts and ghouls come to play.

That said, “spooky season” has become cause for celebration, not fright. Whether consumers are passing out candy to kids or decorating their lawns with an increasing selection of giant monsters from big-box stores, the so-called “spooky season” in fact is full of joy.

In fact, it’s April that truly terrifies people. One word: Taxes. And, conveniently, the classic “spooky season” of October happens to be when financial services companies are doing their tax season ad planning.

Even those who expect high-value refunds, or who don’t have any financial skeletons in the closet, can find a reason to be anxious around tax day. And there’s good reason for this. Taxes can be complex to complete, difficult to personalize for one’s individual financial needs, and expensive, which likely feels like it’s in direct opposition to the promise of an infusion of cash once it’s all said and done.

Today, we’re going to walk through tips on how to make tax season less a little less scary for financial consumers.

Difficulties – perceived or actual – will always stand in the way of successfully completing a task. So for consumers, knowing that they have a large pile of difficult work ahead of them will increase the likelihood of delaying tax preparation.

The goal for your brand is to create a welcoming environment. Taxes are scary – but they don’t have to be, thanks to your brand. Taxes are impossible to navigate – unless they use your brand. And so on.

The key here is to offer a range of solutions designed to create comfort for a wide variety of consumers. Some users might enjoy a more self-service approach. Others may prefer the assistance of a tax professional to review their work. No matter their preference, the key thing is that they’re finding solutions because of your brand.

Consider ad experiences like carousels to walk users through your onboarding process. By seeing the early step-by-step process, you’ll be creating clear expectations – and comforts – for your user base.

Difficulties with Personalization

No two taxpayers have the exact same financial situation. Some might have 9-5 jobs at a corporation and therefore have a comparatively easy tax situation. Others might need a lot more care and personalized attention, whether they’re freelancers, contractors, or small businesses owners with employees.

Your strategy here is to prove your expertise across a variety of topics. Users should come away from your ad experience with the confidence that your brand can hit literally any tax-related pitch.

Consider an ad experience that allows users to explore your suite of offerings, such as a free exploration. This unpressured kind of experience will allow users to become comfortable with your brand on their terms, thereby increasing trust – as well as the likelihood of conversion.

Tax Prep Can Be Expensive

Traditionally, tax day has been seen among advertisers as a time when consumers would be flush with extra cash, and therefore be more willing to splurge on luxury items, vacations, and the like.

But recent tax seasons have painted a very different picture. In 2024, 58% of respondents to a survey said that they would use their tax refunds for pragmatic reasons, such as putting it into savings (28%), paying down debt (19%), and day-to-day expenses (11%). Only 4% of people intended to splurge on nice-to-have items.

What this suggests is a turn towards responsible handling of finances. This can be very good news for financial brands, as they could potentially take the time to offer other financial products in and around tax season. But it also paints a more important picture: these days taxpayers are likely focused on cost.

As a result, we suggest sharing upfront and transparent pricing. Because cost will be a huge motivator, consumers will likely look for ways to spend the least on their tax preparation while receiving the highest possible return.

We suggest leaning into this by not hiding your prices. A simple rich media banner ad that shares pricing options through easy and intuitive interactivity can help you with a strategy like this.

By positioning your brand as easy and welcoming, experienced and intelligent, and cost-conscious, you’ll be putting yourselves in a prime position to attract more customers this tax season. As you’re doing your tax season ad planning, consider how these interactive and rich media advertising strategies can help you ensure that consumers don’t find it more terrifying than a horror movie marathon – and in turn, make it more profitable for your brand.

At Infillion, that’s our specialty – reach out and let’s chat.

It’s been roughly eight years since the IAB first put a stake in the ground and announced that a major shift in interactive video ad serving was at hand.

It’s been a slow shift from VPAID (Video Player-Ad Interface Definition) to VAST (Video Ad Serving Template). While the original version of VAST actually predates VPAID, enhancements to VAST released in 2019 caused it to leapfrog ahead. Concurrently, the IAB launched SIMID (Secure Interactive Media Interface Definition), a VAST-delivered protocol “born from the desire to support interactive ads in a safe and secure environment for publishers and also to enable better cross-platform support by supporting mobile, SSAI, and OTT devices.”

And things continue to change dramatically. For example, the IAB’s Advanced TV Working Group recently released the VAST CTV Addendum 2024, as ad-supported OTT video becomes more widely adopted. But it’s time for even faster and more seamless integration of VAST and SIMID, given the mainstreaming of interactive video among audiences and established networks. After all, one of the reasons interactive video advertising’s rise has struggled to gain traction is the reliance on outdated technologies like VPAID. While it allowed for some level of interactivity, VPAID was plagued by security issues, instability, and lack of publisher support. Publishers were wary of allowing the use of VPAID because it involved injecting JavaScript and HTML into their video players, which posed significant risks.

At Infillion, we learned from these challenges and chose a different path. In particular, our newly released IDVx product does not rely on VPAID. Instead, IDVX was developed as a secure and stable solution that publishers can trust. By working directly with publishers and supply partners, we ensure that our interactive video ads are safe and perform well across various platforms. But we can’t change the industry alone.

To start, it’s best to understand the complexities and values between the two ad serving formats.

The VAST Difference

The difference between VPAID and VAST are … well, vast.

VAST ads are pre-rendered. That allows publishers to preview them, ensuring they meet content and technical standards before being served. This reduces the risk of disrupting the site’s functionality or user experience.

The result is that VAST gives publishers the wherewithal to better control the ad environment, ensuring compliance with content guidelines and avoiding conflicts between competing advertisers. VAST’s simpler, more restrictive format also reduces security risks, since it does not allow for the same level of dynamic content insertion as VPAID as well as limits interactive creative capabilities since VAST creatives are purely video.

Lastly, with predefined content, VAST ads are less likely to introduce performance issues. Publishers have a greater degree of certainty that the ads on their sites meet size and loading time requirements, providing a smoother user experience.

Key advantages of VAST include:

1. Better Publisher Control: VAST gives publishers more control over the ad environment, ensuring compliance with content guidelines and avoiding conflicts between competing advertisers.
2. Enhanced Security: VAST’s simpler, more restrictive format reduces security risks, as it doesn’t allow for the same level of dynamic content insertion as VPAID.
3. Improved Performance: With predefined content, VAST ads are less likely to introduce performance issues. Publishers can be more confident that the ads on their sites meet size and loading time requirements, providing a smoother user experience.
4. Cross-Platform Compatibility: Unlike VPAID, which was primarily designed for web environments, VAST is better suited for mobile in-app and Connected TV (CTV) platforms, opening up new opportunities for advertisers.

Preparing for the Transition

For publishers and advertisers alike, now is the time to prepare for this significant shift in video advertising technology:

1. Explore Open Measurement: Investigate the benefits of the IAB’s Open Measurement SDK and how it can improve your video ad performance.
2. Assess Current Performance: Analyze your current video ad error rates and understand the potential improvements VAST and Open Measurement can offer.
3. Update Video Players: Ensure your video players support the latest VAST versions to take full advantage of new interactive features.
4. Embrace Cross-Platform Solutions: Look for video ad solutions that work seamlessly across web, mobile, and CTV environments. SIMID doesn’t solve everything – it only works on HTML5-supported devices, which some CTV devices can’t handle. But it’s a massive expansion of the playing field nonetheless.

Winning the Peace With VAST

The battle between VPAID and VAST is essentially over. As we noted above,the IAB has been working deliberately on phasing out VPAID due to those security and stability issues. Instead, it’s promoting updated VAST versions (VAST 4.2 and above) with SIMID, which support interactive features without the associated risks of VPAID.

So at the moment, publishers are strongly encouraged to update their video players to support these newer VAST versions, which offer enhanced interactivity while maintaining security and stability.

The challenge is that too many publishers don’t know about these necessary updates until they encounter a problem. The virtues of solutions like IDVx is that the transition from VPAID to VAST is more seamless than past format changes. And that’s a win for consumers and advertisers, as well as publishers.

Want to learn more about IDVx? Reach out to Infillion today.

For most Americans, election years are synonymous with an absolute deluge of ads: commercials for every candidate in the state playing on a loop across every TV channel, billboards and lawn signs scattered around town, and pithy jingles on the radio.

And while some things never change — the U.S. political ad market in and of itself will be the 10th largest singular ad market in the entire world this year, larger than the entire advertising market in Australia — the way that money is spent is changing fast.

In 2024, political ad spend on digital platforms is set to climb a staggering 156% compared to 2020, a year that already seemed to be “extremely online.” Political content is no longer only inescapable in the traditional media world. It’s now omnipresent online, including in some unexpected places: Both parties are major presences on Facebook, Google (including YouTube), and X, but the Harris-Walz campaign made a splash by ‘sponsoring’ the Charli XCX Essentials playlist on Spotify.

One platform in particular stands out for its rapid growth in this election cycle: Connected TV.

It isn’t difficult to see why the digital market appeals to political campaigns: with the majority of ad spend happening in just 7 key states (PA, MI, AZ, GA, WI, NC, and NV), the precise targeting that digital sources provide can reach key demographics who may not be accessible by traditional means, like many Gen Z voters. And programmatic buying — which many CTV streamers offer — allows campaigns flexibility in their messaging which is incredibly important in our blink-and-you’ll-miss-something-major political environment.

That’s not all. Local down-ballot races and ballot initiatives are also making up an increasingly large portion of the ad budget pie — expected to take up 75% of all political ad spend this cycle — and digital platforms can allow for hyper-local targeting that traditional media can’t compete with.

Traditional TV media markets, after all, can end up showing ads for candidates to audiences ineligible to vote for them. The Philadelphia media market, for example, is one of the hottest for political ad spend because of its location in a highly competitive swing state – but linear TV ad buys there also reach hundreds of thousands of people who live in New Jersey and Delaware. In other words, a lot of people are getting a ton of exposure to the candidates in the Pennsylvania Senate race who don’t live or vote in Pennsylvania, and campaigns are paying for those eyeballs.

But on CTV, advertisers can utilize vast data networks to find otherwise difficult-to-pinpoint undecided voters, based on behavioral and demographic identifiers. What does this look like? Here’s an example.

Jane Doe is a 45-year-old white woman living in the Philadelphia suburbs. She is a teacher.

Her commute to work every day — down a main road traveled by many other middle-class white Pennsylvanians in the area — is lined with DOOH billboards specifically tailored with content to appeal to Jane and the issues she cares about.

At work, during her lunch break she listens to her favorite podcast and learns about a local ballot initiative served to her as an audio ad mid-episode based on her location.

When she gets home, she turns on her favorite ad-supported streaming service on CTV and watches the new show all her colleagues have been talking about, which is sprinkled with ads for candidates from the top of the ticket all the way down, alongside QR codes she can scan to learn more about the ones that really catch her eye.

A survey conducted after the 2022 primaries indicated that “…51% of frequent voter households reached by streaming were incremental to traditional TV and would not have been reached by TV alone” according to TV Tech. That number only continues to grow as more voters like Jane make the switch from traditional cable to streaming.

While the entire digital political ad environment is growing, nothing is exploding as much as CTV streaming. Projected spend on CTV ads is expected to climb more than 500% from just 4 years ago, taking up around half of the political sector’s entire projected digital ad spend.

In many ways, CTV offers a best-of-both-worlds experience that combines the power of traditional TV advertising with digital capabilities.

Voters are increasingly distrustful of social media platforms, with 3 out of every 4 Americans not believing that these platforms can be trusted to make unbiased content-moderation decisions. But this skepticism doesn’t seem to extend to CTV and streaming. While the targeting and interactivity capabilities of CTV are exclusively-digital perks, the user’s experience — and thus trust in the content — is similar to that of traditional TV. CTV content is protected by stronger content moderation and fixed programming schedules that reassure users that they’re not being misled with disinformation.

So what does all this mean? Well, we don’t quite know yet. We’re still in the middle of this transition and digital platforms continue to innovate and offer new game-changing tools to take political advertising to the next level. For example, at Infillion, we can use an API integration to place an email signup box directly in the ad experience itself, cutting out multiple clicks in the campaign’s efforts to connect with voters. With the speed at which these new tools and strategies are developing, we’re looking at a completely different ad environment in 2026, 2028, and beyond.

Only time will tell the true impact of this year’s historic political investment in digital advertising. But for better or for worse, a new era of political advertising has fully arrived, and increasingly specific targeting and data-driven programmatic buying are a necessity for political success in 2024.

Want to learn about how Infillion’s unique first-party data can help elevate your CTV strategy? Reach out today.