Relevance outranked reach in Magnite’s latest consumer pulse check. The sell-side advertising platform surveyed 883 digitally connected adults in Sweden and asked what would make them more likely to recall an ad. 54% named product relevance, making it the most-chosen of eight factors.
What the survey found
Personalisation to their interests came second at 45%, followed by entertainment value at 41%. Brand familiarity, being shown across multiple platforms and audio each landed at 25%. Being shown across multiple devices scored 16% and interactivity just 11%.
Because respondents could choose more than one answer, the 54% is a share of people, not proof that relevance works alone. The bigger pattern is creative: the top three recall drivers are about the ad’s fit and feel, while distribution mechanics sit lower.
Magnite also reports that 99% of digitally connected Swedes use at least one of streaming, mobile apps, digital audio or digital news at least twice a week. But that number is a union across channels, not a single channel’s reach. On the report’s own table, no open-internet channel tops 75%, which is below the 79% active on social media.
Why this matters for performance marketers
The survey is a useful reminder that relevance is a creative brief before it is a media plan. A brand can buy connected TV, mobile and audio together, but if the product shown does not fit the viewer’s context, recall suffers.
A practical way to read the data:
- Lead with product relevance and personalisation in creative testing.
- Treat entertainment value as a recall multiplier, not a nice-to-have.
- Be skeptical of cross-platform frequency as a memory substitute.
Magnite sells inventory in the very channels it measured, and the public materials do not include fieldwork dates, sampling method or a margin of error. So treat this as a directional vendor study, not a national census.
A simple framework: fit, feel, frequency
Think of the ranking as a memory funnel. Fit – product relevance – is the base. Feel – personalisation and entertainment – makes the ad worth noticing. Frequency – cross-platform and multi-device exposure – is distribution. If the first two are weak, buying more of the third will not fix recall.
This matches the data: the three most-chosen factors are about the ad’s content, while the distribution levers rank at the bottom. For media buyers, that means coordinating with creative teams earlier, not later.
What to do about it
Run your own relevance check before scaling a campaign. For each segment, ask whether the product shown solves a need the viewer actually has in that moment. Then let personalisation and entertainment reinforce it. Distribution across CTV, mobile and audio can amplify a relevant ad, but the survey suggests it is not the primary reason people remember one.
Second-screen behaviour adds one more opportunity. 59% of respondents say they regularly use a second device while streaming on a connected TV, and one in four of those second-screen users is online shopping. That makes shoppable formats a logical test for advertisers already investing in CTV, provided the creative stays relevant.
Source: PPC Land
