Ad placements, high street footfall, business confidence: 5 killer stats to start your week

We arm you with the stats you need to prepare for the coming week and understand key marketing industry trends.

Consumers increasingly sceptical of brands ‘taking a stand’

Consumers are increasingly sceptical of brands that take a stand, with 39% saying they feel brands are not credible when they do, up from 21% in 2017.

Some 53% of consumers believe brands take a stand for PR and marketing purposes, while 35% perceive it as jumping on a bandwagon. A further 14% think brands feel they have an obligation to participate in public discourse.

However, 34% of consumers believe brands take a stand because they think it’s the right thing to do, while 26% believe brands want to be a positive force for change.

Source: Sprout Social

Two-thirds of consumers hold brands accountable for poor ad placement

UK consumers feel brands are to blame when their ads appear next to poor-quality content, with 68% holding them accountable.

This is an issue because 88% of consumers are annoyed when ads appear next to low-quality content while 55% of consumers say they feel less favourable about brands that appear in sub-standard settings. Some 70% say they would stop using these brands.

The majority (91%) of consumers think seeing ads beside high-quality content is important. A further 65% say they are more likely to engage with ads when they are placed in high-quality content.

Source: IAS

Wet weather hits high street sales

Wet and wintry weather put many shoppers off making trips to the high street and shopping centres in October.

In the four weeks to 26 October, UK footfall declined by 3.2% year on year, a steeper decline than September and the three- and 12-month averages.

The fall was particularly notable on the high street, where footfall was down 4.9% year on years. In retail parks, footfall declined for the first time in five months by 0.5%, while the number of people visiting shopping centres was down 2.4%.

British Retail Consortium CEO Helen Dickinson says: “High streets were hit hardest in October, with the wet and wintery weather putting off many consumers from venturing out to the shops. Weak consumer demand and Brexit uncertainty have both impacted sales in recent months, and this could be further affected by the imminent election campaigning.

“Nonetheless, retailers will be hoping for footfall to pick up as they enter the all-important Golden Quarter.”

Source: British Retail Consortium

Just 14% of location-based advertising uses high-quality signals

Just 14% of adverts that make use of location data are using GPS despite this being more accurate and reliable than IP data.

The analysis of 500 million digital location-targeted impressions in the UK and US found that data signals were made up of 63% randomly targeted GPS signals, 35% device teleportation (where the same device ID is used in two different places at nearly the same time) and 10% hard clustering (where signals are distributed too evenly over an area).

Additionally, 36% of GPS-enabled apps were found to display location fraud.

Typically 90% of impressions should be of high enough quality to be used for specific location targeting, but the analysis found that in half of cases there was a signal quality score of just 70%.

This means that up to 29% of impressions are missing their target, wasting campaign budgets.

Source: Location Sciences

New car registrations slump as buyer confidence wanes

UK new car registrations fell by 6.7% year on year in October, reflecting a tough environment for businesses and consumers and economic and political uncertainty impacts confidence.

Among private owners registrations were down 13.2%, while business registrations fell by almost a third (30.3%). Fleet registrations saw only a slight increase, up 9.3% year on year.

The figures mean that for the year to-date, the new car market is in decline with sales down 2.9% in the first 10 months of the year compared to 2018.

Source: Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders

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