Why emotionally aligned ads perform better

How do you make sure your ads are getting attention? Streaming TV now commands hundreds of millions of viewers, surpassing linear TV in many key demographics. In 2024, CTV ad impressions grew 18% year-over-year, reflecting rising audience engagement and advertiser interest.

However, it’s not enough to just be on your buyers’ TV. In today’s ad-saturated media environment, breaking through the noise has never been more difficult. Marketers aren’t just competing for impressions; they’re fighting for meaningful engagement.

Our brains process thousands of stimuli daily, but only a fraction make it past our cognitive filters.

That’s why aligning with viewers in the correct frame of mind — matching your ad to the content they were just immersed in — is such a powerful proposition. Wurl has worked with top brands and agencies to create case studies proving the impact of emotion alignment. These campaigns have seen significant performance improvements over other tactics. But while it seems intuitive that emotions play a role in ad effectiveness, Wurl wanted to prove out how and why emotions were driving that impact.

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The science of attention: What makes people watch?

CTV provides a unique ad opportunity: it’s lean-back, full-screen, non-skippable, and immersive. Watching ads on TV is also an experience with a long history and cultural memory; viewers are socially conditioned to accept ads in this setting. This drives higher attention and makes CTV a consistently effective and enduring ad environment — especially compared to other media formats.

Exposure ≠ attention

But unfortunately, being on screen doesn’t mean being seen. Even within the high-impact format of TV, studies show that up to 57% of TV ads are visually ignored. So, what drives actual attention?

The three drivers of attention

• Relevance: What feels personally meaningful or emotionally resonant.
• Salience: What visually stands out — colors, motion, contrast.
• Control: Where we consciously choose to focus our mental bandwidth.

Attention is a selective process influenced by emotion and context. People naturally gravitate toward stimuli that reinforce their current emotional state (affective congruence) or have been primed by the content they just watched (priming).

The emotional bridge: Why alignment matters

👉 Access the report now to get actionable insights and apply the lessons to your next CTV campaign.

In a first-of-its-kind analysis across 50+ CTV campaigns, Wurl and TVision set out to answer a critical question: Can emotional alignment boost attention to your ads? The answer is a resounding yes.

When ads match the emotional tone of the content viewers just watched, they’re not only more likely to hold attention — they’re watched longer. Emotionally aligned ads tap into viewers’ existing mindset, reducing cognitive friction and enhancing receptivity.

This was the key finding from the study:

• Ads that match the mood of the surrounding content generate higher attention scores.

That’s the benefit of BrandDiscovery, Wurl’s GenAI-powered contextual targeting solution that analyzes content in real time — and at the scene-level. Advertisers can align their ads with the emotional tone, genre, and brand safety of the surrounding programming. 

Instead of just making sure your ad is viewable, BrandDiscovery makes sure it fits. That relevance helps your ads capture more attention: boosting memorability and driving stronger brand outcomes across awareness, favorability, and purchase intent.

Real-world results from emotional alignment

Dave Bernath, General Manager, Americas at Wurl said: “In TV media buying today, audience targeting is table stakes. The new edge comes from emotional alignment — tapping into the story your viewers are already experiencing. When your ad feels like part of the moment — not a break from it — it earns more attention, sparks deeper engagement, and drives stronger results all the way down the funnel.”

Read the report now to explore the key stats from our study.

Want to level-up your streaming strategy? Check out these results from emotions targeted campaigns:

• A leading quick-service restaurant aligned its campaign with emotions like joy and anticipation — closely tied to hunger and cravings — and saw a 40% boost in restaurant visits and a 48% lift in sales.
• A FinTech brand tapped into joy and trust, achieving a 4x lift in brand favorability and a 2x increase in purchase intent.
• Mindshare, one of the world’s largest media agencies, ran a study across three verticals and observed a 60% average boost in brand favorability through emotional alignment.