What you need to know:

• New research conducted in the UK found campaigns that include news channels are more likely to lead to major long-term business effects than those that don’t
• The research used the IPA Databank, data from the UK’s most effective campaigns
• Peter Field, the Godfather of effectiveness, conducted the research and said the data presents, “An absolutely unarguable story for the inclusion of news brands in media schedules.”

In recent years, Peter Field has attained royalty status in the marketing community based on his analysis of campaigns which prompted a wakeup call for marketers to rethink the value of long-term brand building.

Pretty much everyone knows the 60:40 rule – 60% of your marketing budget should go to long term brand building while 40% is for short term activation campaigns.

Field, alongside Les Binet, now has 10 years' worth of campaign data to dig through as part of the IPA Databank. And his latest deep dive looks at the impact of including news brands in the media mix.

According to Field, misconceptions about news advertising being ineffective are massively wide of the mark. In fact, the data shows that campaigns which include news are much more likely to see major long term business effects than those that don’t.

Breaking it down further, Field says campaigns that include news advertising – specifically a combination of print and digital news channels – have a 74% greater likelihood of driving major market share growth and are 58% more likely to deliver profit. And news advertising is far more likely to drive a reduction in price sensitivity.

These figures align with recent local research commissioned by ThinkNewsBrands which found news advertising drives a greater propensity to purchase.

As Field says, it’s important to know the ‘why’ behind these results. He points to two key metrics: brand quality and brand trust.

According to Field, brand quality is the most closely linked to profit growth. Following just behind is brand trust which Field says is an increasingly important factor in profit growth. These two metrics happen to be great strengths of news brands and trend data makes it clear they are behind news’s growing impact.

Trust is a long-established benefit of advertising in news with the trust readers place on the content creating a halo effect. People trust the brands that bring them the news therefore they trust the brands they see alongside their news content. But it’s about much more than trust.

It is clear from Field’s analysis that news has a powerful impression on the perception of what we see, and this also extends to the ads placed in print and digital news. Brands that advertise in news are much more likely to be seen as ‘quality’ brands.

According to Field, “the story is getting stronger for news.” And analysis of the IPA Databank presents, “An absolutely unarguable story for the inclusion of news brands in media schedules.”

So the question begs to be asked, if you’re not already, why aren’t you investing in news advertising?