• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, May 24, 2011

Ad effectiveness research firm Dynamic Logic has introduced a new service that will enable marketers to take advantage of third-party panels and databases to better gauge online campaign results both in real-time and over time.

Through partnerships with outside research firms and database providers, including Compete, Cymfony, Federated Sample, Kantar Shopcom, Lightspeed Research and uSamp, the new AdRadar offering promises to connect advertisers with more than 10 million U.S. panelists collectively.

By providing the ability to link display ads and Web sites to multiple panels, Millward Brown unit Dynamic Logic aims to offer broader insight into how marketing efforts impact consumer behavior, brand equity and sales.

Ken Greenberg, vice president of product development at Dynamic Logic, noting the company's expertise in linking ad exposrue in the live sampling environment, said: "AdRadar now allows us to expand that capability into panels. So it links the largest survey and data panels to ad and other digital asset exposure."

How can brands and advertisers use AdRadar? For example, Greenberg explains, a Hollywood studio that knows a panelist saw a newly released movie on a Friday can follow up to discover if that person actually went to see that movie over the weekend.

Or in the case of retail, a CPG company could examine how online ads changed attitudes toward their brand, affected social media buzz, or drove in-store sales -- via sources like Cymfony and Federated Sample, which collects retail and other purchase data. "We can connect the dots between ad exposure all the way to purchase of products," said Greenberg.

Among other industries, a pharmaceutical company might survey doctors through an AdRadar-linked panel to learn how their ad campaign raised awareness of a new drug. Dynamic Logic also plans to add an auto sales database, so carmakers and automotive brands would be able to tie that information to ad campaigns.

Greenberg said the company has been readying AdRadar for the last six months, lining up partners, getting opt-in from individual panelists, and testing the service with clients including Marriott International and video ad network BrightRoll. "We wanted to make sure we did this right."

Working with outside panels previously, Dynamic Logic, best known for its AdIndex platform for tracking brand metrics, could not be sure whether participants had seen a particular ad or other piece of online content. "Now we know fairly precisely that this person has been exposed to a certain digital asset, and then survey them, and that's the core competency of our partners, surveying these panels," said Greenberg.

He added that the addition of panel-based research would complement the live Web sampling techniques on which Dynamic Logic has typically relied, where participants -- both control and exposed -- are recruited directly from the sites where a campaign is running.

"Now we believe we have the most flexibility in the industry," said Greenberg. While Dynamic Logic is initially focusing on U.S.-based panels, AdRadar would eventually offer global reach and expand to 20 million panelists.