Yahoo!/Dynamic Logic Study Reveals Increase In Key Brand Metrics
- by March 8, 2004
The research, commissioned by Yahoo!, represents the first time the Internet giant has released aggregated campaign results on brand effectiveness. Yahoo! and other Web media players have sought to prove online ad effectiveness via third-party research organizations in a bid to demonstrate to brand marketers the impact and return on investment that online media can generate. Microsoft Corp.'s MSN Network and the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) have also delivered case studies and research on the effectiveness of online media. The IAB's cross-media optimization studies are conducted by Rex Briggs, principal, Marketing Evolution.
Dynamic Logic's five brand metrics are: brand awareness, ad awareness, message association, brand favorability, and purchase intent. The research showed that across all five metrics, online advertising improved brand strength by 6 to 42 percent, in contrast to consumers surveyed who were not exposed to the online campaigns. The overall MarketNorms industry findings revealed a 7 percent rise in aided brand awareness; 42 percent in online ad awareness; 6 percent in brand favorability and purchase intent; and a 24 percent lift in message association.
Yahoo!'s norms consistently outperform industry benchmarks. Compared to the overall MarketNorms data, Yahoo! saw a 37 percent rise in aided brand awareness; 30 percent in online ad awareness; 31 percent in message association; 8 percent in brand favorability; and 14 percent in purchase intent.
"The Internet needs to be a critical element within the overall budget-- we call it the 'above and beyond factor,'" says Blake Chandlee, Yahoo!'s category development officer for consumer packaged goods. The research, Chandlee says, represents a "combination of both the industry impact, and the fact that Yahoo!, on top of that, is able to deliver significant incremental changes."
While Yahoo! declined to specify the majority of brand marketers' campaigns involved in the research, it did cite Frito-Lay's Doritos and the U.S. Department of the Treasury's campaign for the new $20 bill as two of the campaigns analyzed by Dynamic Logic.
Frito Lay tied Doritos to an extensive integrated promotion on Yahoo!'s Launch music service. The "Soundbites on Live@Launch" campaign yielded increases in all awareness metrics and exceeded overall Internet norms in brand awareness, online ad awareness, brand favorability, and purchase intent. Program highlights included an artist of the month fixture and a sweepstakes that gave participants the chance to be a producer for a day for a band. Frito's Doritos brand maintained a consistent presence on Yahoo! for most of 2003.
The atypical campaign for the new $20 bill, launched last fall, not only had to raise awareness for the new bill among consumers and retail clerks, but asked them to take action by following instructions to authenticate the currency. Authentification involved looking for bill's new features--its color shifting ink, watermark, and embedded security thread. The research found that consumers who saw the ads on Yahoo!, versus those who didn't, were more aware of the new design for the $20 bill--there were solid increases across all awareness metrics. In addition, those who saw the ads on Yahoo! were more likely to change their habits and authenticate the bills, showing a lift in persuasion metrics.
"For us, [the research] really confirms and validates what we've been saying," Chandlee says, continuing: "As consumers as well as their consumption of media shifts to the Internet, and at the same time broadband penetration levels increase and rich media increases, the user experience gets better. That's a fundamental part of our business. Consumers choose where they go on the Web and when they interact with various advertisers."
Of the research findings, Nick Nyan, president-Dynamic Logic, says: "The significance of the research is that Yahoo! has shown that on an average basis, it outperforms the industry norms as measured by MarketNorms." Further, Nyan says it was interesting to notice the consistency of the findings. "Yahoo! is better on awareness and persuasion, but still while they're higher, those are [very] challenging metrics to move. It's not easy."
Dynamic Logic's MarketNorms database is comprised of more than one million completed AdIndex surveys, which provide evidence that online advertising positively impacts brand awareness and influences purchase decisions. The database offers survey data accumulated during the last four years on more than 10,000 online ads. The company has a technology that enables it to determine when a respondent has viewed an ad or not, and compares the brand perceptions of consumers who were exposed to online ads versus those who weren't.
