• by Masha Geller , September 24, 2002

DoubleClick Inc. has been busy researching all kinds of things in the last few months, and yesterday released a second study in as many days, this one highlighting the fact that online advertising is the most cost-effective advertising medium for driving incremental sales.

The Media Mix Modeling Case Study was conducted by DoubleClick on behalf of a prescription allergy drug brand to determine the relative impact that various marketing activities have on incremental sales.

According to the results, TV was the biggest driver of incremental sales, as was expected due to the mix of budget allocated to TV. The results also revealed that print advertising was almost twice as effective as TV in driving incremental sales for this allergy drug, while online advertising was more than three times more effective than TV at driving incremental sales.

In examining the relative responsiveness of each media, TV makes up 85% of total impressions, yet drives 73% of media-driven prescriptions, whereas online advertising accounts for only 3% of total impressions, yet drives 7% of media-driven prescriptions.

Print and online advertising are also more cost effective than TV advertising for this allergy drug. Despite higher CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) than either TV or print, due to the targeted media purchased, online was more efficient at driving incremental prescriptions.

The relative cost per incremental prescription generated from TV advertising is almost 30% higher than print and 50% higher than online. Print advertising is almost 20% higher than online on a relative cost per incremental prescription.

Based on the above data, if the television budget was decreased by 3.1% and online was increased by 50%, with the same dollar total, prescriptions would have increased by 0.1% over the five quarters analyzed. This can translate to significant revenue for a large brand as the consumer continually refills their prescriptions.

Take that to your next client meeting.