The Online Publishers Association (OPA) yesterday released a new White Paper entitled Assessing the Value of Loyal Audiences, intended to provide marketers with a better understanding of the role of various metrics in evaluating a website's advertising potential and determining its advertising value. The data show that premium, branded content sites outperform the industry norms on every available measure - more than doubling advertising impact in Unaided Awareness (27.5% lift versus 11.3% lift) and outperforming the weighted average by two-thirds on Message Association (32.6% lift versus 19.4% lift). In addition to achieving a significant advantage in Unaided Awareness and Message Association, advertisers on these sites also experienced notable gains in Aided Awareness (5.3% lift versus 4.4% lift), Brand Favorability (1.6% lift versus 1.2% lift) and Purchase Intent (1.6% lift versus 1.5% lift) over industry norms. OPA Executive Director Michael Zimbalist said that the research demonstrates that there is “an apparent interaction working to advertisers' advantage on sites for which visitors have high affinity and loyalty."