• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, April 23, 2008

Less Than Half of Advertisers Use Online Display Ads for Branding

Marketing Sherpa, in it's inaugural Online Advertising Handbook with 2008 Benchmarks, using both primary and secondary research, reports that less than half of advertisers use online display ads for branding purposes, despite overall increase in branding effectiveness of online ads, low click rates getting lower, and 80% of all clicks coming from the same 20% of all Internet users.  

According to the report, to choose an advertising strategy that will affect ROI, not clicks, marketers surveyed said the two tests they ran that were most likely to "significantly increase ROI" were online ad effectiveness studies and online focus groups.

The included eyetracking study shows that most individuals don‘t see most ads served to them -- especially ads served below the fold. And, says the Executive Summary, media delivery reports rarely include information on whether, or what percentage of, a media buy was served above or below the fold. According to the included chart of placement results, just being above the fold makes a significant difference.

The study notes that advertisers rate the ability to use behavioral and contextual targeting to be important as key ROI drivers, and quotes  InsightExpress research, showing that targeting is a key driver of effectiveness and that ads are more effective in 2007 than they were previously. The summary concludes that the key takeaway for advertisers is that the context in which an ad is served is just as important as the ad itself.

The study explores the multitude of factors that go into getting frequency right, including actual results from an InsightExpress ad effectiveness case study, and and exposure research from Doubleclick.

If a campaign is served without frequency capping, enabled by ad server technology, says the report, it will be distributed according to natural web page consumption patterns. What this means for frequency is that heavy consumers will eat up the majority of the impressions and get too many ads, while the rest of the site‘s audience will be underserved and often see too few ads

Special reports on the impact of rich media, online video and online advertising and brand include summaries from:

• Unicast, showing how rich media increases key brand and interaction measures
• InsightExpress, providing essential metrics around branding and online advertising
• ManiaTV, suggesting how online video and advertising within it creates powerful brand moments and increases the understanding of marketing messages.

 
Tim McAtee, Senior Analyst MarketingSherpa, concludes that  "...proof from our survey (shows ) that qualitative research... affect(ing) the insights going into ad creation can actually be more effective from an ROI standpoint than improving tracking or A/B testing... (In addition, with) branding dashboards that incorporate both brand metrics projected from survey sample data with observed, tracked metrics like impressions and clicks, it's possible for marketers to get a fuller picture of what's actually happening with an online campaign... " 

For more information about the study and handbook from MarketingSherpa please visit here... or access the PDF Executive Summary here.