LAS VEGAS — Consumers increasingly feel brands don’t care about them as companies reduce brand investment under pressure to prove immediate value, creating disconnection that surfaces in research showing most people believe advertisers pursue transactions rather than relationships.
“Something like 71% of consumers have said, ‘I think they’re only after me for my dollars.’ Meanwhile, 50-plus percent of people said brands ‘don’t care about me or try to court me the way that they used to,’” Joanna O’Connell, chief intelligence officer for Omnicom Media, North America, told Beet.TV Editorial Director Lisa Granatstein at CES. “Why has that changed? One of the things that we looked at in the piece as well was the role of brands in consumer decision making. Investment in brand overall is down.”
CMOs face enormous pressure to prove brand investment value despite research demonstrating its ability to drive business performance, pushing them toward direct response goals that consumers notice and feel.
Information asymmetry disappears
Traditional buyer-seller dynamics relied on information asymmetry where sellers possessed knowledge buyers lacked, but consumer access to unlimited information eliminates this advantage and demands authenticity from brands.
“You’re selling a car, you know things that the buyer doesn’t know,” O’Connell said. “That’s ‘information asymmetry.’ If a consumer wants to understand something, they can find the information. So it just requires a level of authenticity and realness for brands that I think was nice to have before, but more of a requirement now.”
Trust is shifting from large institutions to individuals including influencers as people turn to social media for news and purchase guidance, with 44% trusting product recommendations from generative AI — up significantly from one year prior, O’Connell said.
Attention spans suffer
Sixty-three percent of consumers rate their attention as okay or not great, while 40% report not noticing social media ads despite platforms’ heavy ad loads.
“Something about the traditional model isn’t working as well as it used to,” O’Connell said. “It’s really a whole mindset change.”
Brands must challenge traditional growth paradigms beyond reach and frequency metrics, which remain table stakes but insufficient for influence.
Emotional availability matters
Accessing consumers’ emotional availability becomes critical alongside mental availability, requiring brands to reach people at moments of salience when positive influence becomes more likely.
“Consumers are telling us that they’re open, they want connection, they want to feel as though brands care about them, they want authenticity and transparency,” O’Connell said. “If you’re only chasing reach and frequency, you are not going far enough.”
Partnership’ advantage
Omnicom Media creates partnership “co-developments; with platforms including Amazon, Walmart, Meta, Pinterest, TikTok, Disney, The Trade Desk, and Google that tap into consumer insights for competitive advantage.
Influencer selection requires sophistication beyond follower counts or buzz metrics to identify voices that reach target audiences at moments that matter. Live streaming opportunities extend beyond tentpole event spots to programmatic bidding strategies.
“Live example would be bidding programmatically in sports on Disney to get the first ad impression that a person sees when they join the live sporting event on streaming TV,” O’Connell said. “Salience is so high at that moment. They haven’t seen any other ads. They’re just joining that sports broadcast and you are there for the very first ad. That is how you capture outsize influence in an environment like live.”
Research drives practical application
Thought leadership research creates value when converted into practical tools rather than existing for its own sake, O’Connell said.
“When you can develop something that is unique and creates a competitive advantage for a client that taps into a super important consumer or market insight, you are bringing the client to the head of the line with where media is going and how consumers are behaving,” O’Connell said. “That’s the important marriage, is the marriage of an insight through thought leadership and research and the build of a co-development opportunity that takes advantage of that insight and creates something new for a client.”
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