The film series examines the linguistics, science and behavioural psychology behind video advertising.

We’ve brought together leading experts in consumer behaviour, neuroscience and advertising. We were interested in hearing their perspectives on online advertising, and more specifically, the importance of context.

The films highlight how publishers can create effective environments to reach consumers with compelling content and advertising. All five films contain academic theories and practices that can be applied to advertising in a marketplace saturated with poorly targeted ads.

A ‘Hero’ film offers an overview of all five topics, whilst five individual films allow a deeper dive into each individual subject.

Successful online storytelling

“It’s really important to judge where you put your advert in terms of context. What the brain does is choose what it pays attention to. You’re constantly scanning your environment for things that are important to you, and if something like that comes up, you will pay attention to it.” Ali Jennings, Neuroscience PhD at UCL

Disrupting the right way

“Finding something that disrupts us in a way that again grabs our attention makes us think, makes us look at it – that can be a good thing. The trick is to find disruption that people are going to relate to.” Isabelle Szmigin, Director of Research and Knowledge Transfer at Birmingham University

Applying linguistic techniques

There’s got to be a neat fit between what the message is, what the product is and where it’s displayed. It is what we call congruence or fit. Margaret Hogg, Professor of Marketing & Consumer Behaviour at the University of Lancaster

Understanding consumer behavior

So brands have basically two different options. They try to anticipate the mood that a consumer is in and try to adapt to that mood, or they try to change the mood. Sabine Benoit, Professor of Marketing at the University of Surrey

Infusing cross-platform comunications with creativity

Modern platforms are helping advertisers tell more creative stories, more interesting, more engaging stories. Steve Spence, course leader in Advertising at London College of Communications

Our CEO and co-founder, Kai Henniges, comments: “As we’ve seen with recent stories around Cambridge Analytica and GDPR, there is more pressure on brands than ever to tell honest, interesting stories with their advertising. Each of these films looks at a different aspect of this, highlighting theories and approaches that publishers should consider when curating platforms that meet the needs of both consumers and advertisers.”

“When we spoke with these scientists and academics we learned that the behaviour we see from consumers is in line with their research findings. Perhaps if we worked more closely with those who understand the effects of our technology, we would be able to design it better.”

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